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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Woman Triumphant, by Vicente Blasco Ibañez
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Woman Triumphant
+       (La Maja Desnuda)
+
+Author: Vicente Blasco Ibañez
+
+Translator: Hayward Keniston
+
+Release Date: July 19, 2006 [EBook #18876]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN TRIUMPHANT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Carlo Traverso, Janet Blenkinship, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreaders Europe at
+http://dp.rastko.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WOMAN TRIUMPHANT
+
+(LA MAJA DESNUDA)
+
+BY
+
+VICENTE BLASCO IBAÑEZ
+
+
+TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH
+
+BY
+
+HAYWARD KENISTON
+
+WITH A SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY THE AUTHOR
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+NEW YORK
+E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
+681 FIFTH AVENUE
+Copyright, 1920,
+BY K. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
+
+_All Rights Reserved_
+
+
+
+
+First printing March, 1920
+
+Second printing March, 1920
+
+Third printing March, 1920
+
+Fourth printing March, 1920
+
+Fifth printing March, 1920
+
+Sixth printing March, 1920
+
+Seventh printing March. 1920
+
+Eighth printing March, 1920
+
+Ninth printing April, 1920
+
+Tenth printing April, 1920
+
+Eleventh printing April, 1920
+
+Twelfth printing April, 1920
+
+Thirteenth printing April, 1920
+
+Fourteenth printing April, 1920
+
+
+Printed In the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY NOTE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION
+
+
+The title of this novel in the original, _La maja desnuda_, "The Nude
+Maja," is also the name of one of the most famous pictures of the great
+Spanish painter Francisco Goya.
+
+The word _maja_ has no exact equivalent in English or in any of the
+modern languages. Literally, it means "bedecked," "showy," "gaudily
+attired," "flashy," "dazzling," etc., and it was applied at the end of
+the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth to a
+certain class of gay women of the lower strata of Madrid society
+notorious for their love of dancing and their fondness for exhibiting
+themselves conspicuously at bull-fights and all popular celebrations.
+The great ladies of the aristocracy affected the free ways and imitated
+the picturesque dress of the _maja_; Goya made this type the central
+figure of many of his genre paintings, and the dramatist Ramón de la
+Cruz based most of his _sainetes_--farcical pieces in one act--upon the
+customs and rivalries of these women. The dress invented by the _maja_,
+consisting of a short skirt partly covered by a net with berry-shaped
+tassels, white _mantilla_ and high shell-comb, is considered all over
+the world as the national costume of Spanish women.
+
+When the novel first appeared in Spain some years ago, a certain part of
+the Madrid public, unduly evil-minded, thought that it had discovered
+the identity of the real persons whom I had taken as models to draw my
+characters. This claim provoked a scandalous sensation and gave my book
+an unwholesome notoriety. It was thought that the protagonists of _La
+maja desnuda_ were an illustrious Spanish painter of world-wide fame,
+who is my friend, and an aristocratic lady very celebrated at the time
+but now forgotten. I protested against this unwarranted and fantastic
+interpretation. Although I draw my characters from life, I do so only in
+a very fragmentary way (like all the great creative novelists whom I
+admire as masters in the field of fiction), using the materials gathered
+in my observations to form completely new types which are the direct and
+legitimate offspring of my own imagination. To use a figure: as a
+novelist I am a painter, not a photographer. Although I seek my
+inspiration in reality, I copy it in accordance with my own way of
+seeing it; I do not reproduce it with the mechanical servility of the
+photographic camera.
+
+It is possible that my imaginary heroes are vaguely reminiscent of
+beings who actually exist. Subconsciousness is the novelist's principal
+instrument, and this subconsciousness frequently mocks us, leading us to
+mistake for our own creation the things which we have unwittingly
+observed in Nature. But despite this, it is unfair, as well as risky,
+for the reader to assign the names of real persons to the characters of
+fiction, saying, "This is So-and-so."
+
+It would be equally unfair to consider this novel as audacious or of
+doubtful morality. The artistic world which I describe in _La maja
+desnuda_ cannot be expected to have the same conception of life as the
+conventional world. Far from believing it immoral, I consider this one
+of the most moral novels I have ever written. And it is for this reason
+that, with a full realization of the standards demanded by the
+English-reading public, I have not hesitated to authorize the present
+translation without palliation or amputation, fully convinced that the
+reader will not find anything in this novel objectionable or offensive
+to his moral sense. Morality is not to be found in words but in deeds
+and in the lessons which these deeds teach.
+
+The difficulty of adequately translating the word _maja_ into English
+led to the adoption of "Woman Triumphant" as the title of the present
+version. I believe it is a happy selection; it interprets the spirit of
+the novel. But it must be borne in mind that the woman here is the wife
+of the protagonist. It is the wife who triumphs, resurrecting in spirit
+to exert an overwhelming influence over the life of a man who had wished
+to live without her.
+
+Renovales, the hero, is simply the personification of human desire, this
+poor desire which, in reality, does not know what it wants, eternally
+fickle and unsatisfied. When we finally obtain what we desire, it does
+not seem enough. "More: I want more," we say. If we lose something that
+made life unbearable, we immediately wish it back as indispensable to
+our happiness. Such are we: poor deluded children who cried yesterday
+for what we scorn to-day and shall want again to-morrow; poor deluded
+beings plunging across the span of life on the Icarian wings of caprice.
+
+                                                 VICENTE BLASCO IBAÑEZ.
+
+New York, January, 1920.
+
+
+
+
+WOMAN TRIUMPHANT
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+I
+
+
+It was eleven o'clock in the morning when Mariano Renovales reached the
+Museo del Prado. Several years had passed since the famous painter had
+entered it. The dead did not attract him; very interesting they were,
+very worthy of respect, under the glorious shroud of the centuries, but
+art was moving along new paths and he could not study there under the
+false glare of the skylights, where he saw reality only through the
+temperaments of other men. A bit of sea, a mountainside, a group of
+ragged people, an expressive head attracted him more than that palace,
+with its broad staircases, its white columns and its statues of bronze
+and alabaster--a solemn pantheon of art, where the neophytes vacillated
+in fruitless confusion, without knowing what course to follow.
+
+The master Renovales stopped for a few moments at the foot of the
+stairway. He contemplated the valley through which you approach the
+palace--with its slopes of fresh turf, dotted at intervals with the
+sickly little trees--with a certain emotion, as men are wont to
+contemplate, after a long absence, the places familiar to their youth.
+Above the scattered growth the ancient church of Los Jerónimos, with its
+gothic masonry, outlined against the blue sky its twin towers and ruined
+arcades. The wintry foliage of the Retiro served as a background for
+the white mass of the Casón. Renovales thought of the frescos of
+Giordano that decorated its ceilings. Afterwards, he fixed his attention
+on a building with red walls and a stone portal, which pretentiously
+obstructed the space in the foreground, at the edge of the green slope.
+Bah! The Academy! And the artist's sneer included in the same loathing
+the Academy of Language and the other Academies--painting, literature,
+every manifestation of human thought, dried, smoked, and swathed, with
+the immortality of a mummy, in the bandages of tradition, rules, and
+respect for precedent.
+
+A gust of icy wind shook the skirts of his overcoat, his long beard
+tinged with gray and his wide felt hat, beneath the brim of which
+protruded the heavy locks of his hair, that had excited so much comment
+in his youth, but which had gradually grown shorter with prudent
+trimming, as the master rose in the world, winning fame and money.
+
+Renovales felt cold in the damp valley. It was one of those bright,
+freezing days that are so frequent in the winter in Madrid. The sun was
+shining; the sky was blue; but from the mountains, covered with snow,
+came an icy wind, that hardened the ground, making it as brittle as
+glass. In the corners, where the warmth of the sun did not reach, the
+morning frost still glistened like a coating of sugar. On the mossy
+carpet, the sparrows, thin with the privations of winter, trotted back
+and forth like children, shaking their bedraggled feathers.
+
+The stairway of the Museo recalled to the master his early youth, when
+at sixteen he had climbed those steps many a time with his stomach faint
+from the wretched meal at the boarding-house. How many mornings he had
+spent in that old building copying Velásquez! The place brought to his
+memory his dead hopes, a host of illusions that now made his smile;
+recollections of hunger and humiliating bargaining to make his first
+money by the sale of copies. His large, stern face, his brow that filled
+his pupils and admirers with terror lighted up with a merry smile. He
+recalled how he used to go into the Museo with halting steps, how he
+feared to leave the easel, lest people might notice the gaping soles of
+his boots that left his feet uncovered.
+
+He passed through the vestibule and opened the first glass door.
+Instantly the noises of the world outside ceased; the rattling of the
+carriages in the Prado; the bells of the street-cars, the dull rumble of
+the carts, the shrill cries of the children who were running about on
+the slopes. He opened the second door, and his face, swollen by the
+cold, felt the caress of warm air, buzzing with the vague hum of
+silence. The footfalls of the visitors reverberated in the manner
+peculiar to large, unoccupied buildings. The slam of the door, as it
+closed, resounded like a cannon shot, passing from hall to hall through
+the heavy curtains. From the gratings of the registers poured the
+invisible breath of the furnaces. The people, on entering, spoke in a
+low tone, as if they were in a cathedral; their faces assumed an
+expression of unnatural seriousness, as though they were intimidated by
+the thousands of canvases that lined the walls, by the enormous busts
+that decorated the circle of the rotunda and the middle of the central
+salon.
+
+On seeing Renovales, the two door-keepers, in their long frock-coats,
+started to their feet. They did not know who he was, but he certainly
+was somebody. They had often seen that face, perhaps in the newspapers,
+perhaps on match-boxes. It was associated in their minds with the glory
+of popularity, with the high honors reserved for people of distinction.
+Presently they recognized him. It was so many years since they had seen
+him there! And the two attendants, with their caps covered with
+gold-braid in their hands and with an obsequious smile, came forward
+towards the great artist.
+
+"Good morning, Don Mariano. Did Señor de Renovales wish something? Did
+he want them to call the curator?" They spoke with oily obsequiousness,
+with the confusion of courtiers who see a foreign sovereign suddenly
+enter their palace, recognizing him through his disguise.
+
+Renovales rid himself of them with a brusque gesture and cast a glance
+over the large decorative canvases of the rotunda, that recalled the
+wars of the 17th century; generals with bristling mustaches and plumed
+slouch-hat, directing the battle with a short baton, as though they were
+directing an orchestra, troops of arquebusiers disappearing downhill
+with banners of red and blue crosses at their front, forests of pikes
+rising from the smoke, green meadows of Flanders in the
+backgrounds--thundering, fruitless combats that were almost the last
+gasps of a Spain of European influence. He lifted a heavy curtain and
+entered the spacious salon, where the people at the other end looked
+like little wax figures under the dull illumination of the skylights.
+
+The artist continued straight ahead, scarcely noticing the pictures, old
+acquaintances that could tell him nothing new. His eyes sought the
+people without, however, finding in them any greater novelty. It seemed
+as though they formed a part of the building and had not moved from it
+in many years; good-natured fathers with a group of children before
+their knees, explaining the meaning of the pictures; a school teacher,
+with her well-behaved and silent pupils who, in obedience to the command
+of their superior, passed without stopping before the lightly clad
+saints; a gentleman with two priests, talking loudly, to show that he
+was intelligent and almost at home there; several foreign ladies with
+their veils caught up over their straw hats and their coats on their
+arms, consulting the catalogue, all with a sort of family-air, with
+identical expressions of admiration and curiosity, until Renovales
+wondered if they were the same ones he had seen there years before, the
+last time he was there.
+
+As he passed, he greeted the great masters mentally; on one side the
+holy figures of El Greco, with their greenish or bluish spirituality,
+slender and undulating; beyond, the wrinkled, black heads of Ribera,
+with ferocious expressions of torture and pain--marvelous artists, whom
+Renovales admired, while determined not to imitate them. Afterwards,
+between the railing that protects the pictures and the line of busts,
+show-cases and marble tables supported by gilded lions, he came upon the
+easels of several copyists. They were boys from the School of Fine Arts,
+or poverty-stricken young ladies with run-down heels and dilapidated
+hats, who were copying Murillos. They were tracing on the canvas the
+blue of the Virgin's robe or the plump flesh of the curly-haired boys
+that played with the Divine Lamb. Their copies were commissions from
+pious people; a _genre_ that found an easy sale among the benefactors of
+convents and oratories. The smoke of the candles, the wear of years, the
+blindness of devotion would dim the colors, and some day the eyes of the
+worshipers, weeping in supplication, would see the celestial figures
+move with mysterious life on their blackened background, as they
+implored from them wondrous miracles.
+
+The master made his way toward the Hall of Velásquez. It was there that
+his friend Tekli was working. His visit to the Museo had no other object
+than to see the copy that the Hungarian painter was making of the
+picture of _Las Meninas_.
+
+The day before, when the foreigner was announced in his studio, he had
+remained perplexed for a long while, looking at the name on the card.
+Tekli! And then all at once he remembered a friend of twenty years
+before, when he lived in Rome; a good-natured Hungarian, who admired him
+sincerely and who made up for his lack of genius with a silent
+persistency in his work, like a beast of burden.
+
+Renovales was glad to see his little blue eyes, hidden under his thin,
+silky eyebrows, his jaw, protruding like a shovel, a feature that made
+him look very much like the Austrian monarchs--his tall frame that bent
+forward under the impulse of excitement, while he stretched out his bony
+arms, long as tentacles, and greeted him in Italian:
+
+"Oh, _maestro, caro maestro!_"
+
+He had taken refuge in a professorship, like all artists who lack the
+power to continue the upward climb, who fall in the rut. Renovales
+recognized the artist-official in his spotless suit, dark and proper, in
+his dignified glance that rested from time to time on his shining boots
+that seemed to reflect the whole studio. He even wore on one lapel of
+his coat the variegated button of some mysterious decoration. The felt
+hat, white as meringue, which he held in his hand, was the only
+discordant feature in this general effect of a public functionary.
+Renovales caught his hands with sincere enthusiasm. The famous Tekli!
+How glad he was to see him! What times they used to have in Rome! And
+with a smile of kindly superiority he listened to the story of his
+success. He was a professor in Budapest; every year he saved money in
+order to go and study in some celebrated European museum. At last he had
+succeeded in coming to Spain, fulfilling the desire he had cherished for
+many years.
+
+"_Oh, Velásquez! uel maestro, caro Mariano!_"
+
+And throwing back his head, with a dreamy expression in his eyes, he
+moved his protruding jaw covered with reddish hair, with a voluptuous
+look, as though he were sipping a glass of his sweet native Tokay.
+
+He had been in Madrid for a month, working every morning in the Museo.
+His copy of _Las Meninas_ was almost finished. He had not been to see
+his "Dear Mariano" sooner because he wanted to show him this work. Would
+he come and see him some morning in the Museo? Would he give him this
+proof of his friendship? Renovales tried to decline. What did he care
+for a copy? But there was an expression of such humble supplication in
+the Hungarian's little eyes, he showered him with so many praises of his
+great triumphs, expatiating on the success that his picture _Man
+Overboard!_ had won at the last Budapest Exhibition, that the master
+promised to go to the Museo.
+
+And a few days later, one morning when a gentleman whose portrait he was
+painting canceled his appointment, Renovales remembered his promise and
+went to the Museo del Prado, feeling, as he entered, the same sensation
+of insignificance and homesickness that a man suffers on returning to
+the university where he has passed his youth.
+
+When he found himself in the Hall of Velásquez, he suddenly felt seized
+with religious respect. There was a painter! _The_ painter! All his
+irreverent theories of hatred for the dead were left outside the door.
+The charm of those canvases that he had not seen for many years rose
+again--fresh, powerful, irresistible; it overwhelmed him, awakening his
+remorse. For a long time he remained motionless, turning his eyes from
+one picture to another, eager to comprise in one glance the whole work
+of the immortal, while around him the hum of curiosity began again.
+
+"Renovales! That's Renovales!"
+
+The news had started from the door, spreading through the whole Museo,
+reaching the Hall of Velásquez behind his steps. The groups of curious
+people stopped gazing at the pictures to look at that huge,
+self-possessed man who did not seem to realize the curiosity that
+surrounded him. The ladies, as they went from canvas to canvas, looked
+out of the corner of their eyes at the celebrated artist whose portrait
+they had seen so often. They found him more ugly, more commonplace than
+he appeared in the engravings in the papers. It did not seem possible
+that that "porter" had talent and painted women so well. Some young
+fellows approached to look at him more closely, pretending to gaze at
+the same pictures as the master. They scrutinized him, noting his
+external peculiarities with that desire for enthusiastic imitation which
+marks the novice. Some determined to copy his soft bow-tie and his
+tangled hair, with the fantastic hope that this would give them a new
+spirit for painting. Others complained to themselves that they were
+beardless and could not display the curly gray whiskers of the famous
+master.
+
+He, with his keen sensitiveness to praise, was not long in observing the
+atmosphere of curiosity that surrounded him. The young copyists seemed
+to stick closer to their easels, knitted their brows, dilated their
+nostrils, and moved their brushes slowly, with hesitation, knowing that
+he was behind them, trembling at every step that sounded on the inlaid
+floor, full of fear and desire that he might deign to cast a glance over
+their shoulders. He divined with a sort of pride what all the mouths
+were whispering, what all the eyes were saying, fixed absent-mindedly on
+the canvases only to turn toward him.
+
+"It's Renovales--the painter Renovales."
+
+The master looked for a long while at one of the copyists--an old man,
+decrepit and almost blind, with heavy convex spectacles that gave him
+the appearance of a sea-monster, whose hands trembled with senile
+unsteadiness. Renovales recognized him. Twenty years before, when he
+used to study in the Museo, he had seen him in the same spot, always
+copying _Los Borrachos_. Even if he should become completely blind, if
+the picture should be lost, he could reproduce it by feeling. In those
+days they had often talked together, but the poor man could not have the
+remotest suspicion that the Renovales whom people talked so much about
+was the same lad who on more than one occasion had borrowed a brush from
+him, but whose memory was scarcely preserved in his mind, mummified by
+eternal imitation.
+
+Renovales thought of the kindness of the chummy Bacchus and the gang of
+ruffians of his court, who for half a century had been supporting the
+household of the copyist, and he fancied he could see the old wife, the
+married children, the grandchildren--a whole family supported by the old
+man's trembling hand.
+
+Some one whispered to him the news that was filling the Museo with
+excitement and the copyist, shrugging his shoulders disdainfully, raised
+his moribund glance from his work.
+
+And so Renovales was there, the famous Renovales! At last he was going
+to see the prodigy!
+
+The master saw those grotesque eyes like those of a sea-monster, fixed
+on him, with an ironical gleam behind the heavy lenses. The grafter! He
+had already heard of that studio, as splendid as a palace, behind the
+Retire What Renovales had in such plenty had been taken from men like
+him who, for want of influence, had been left behind. He charged
+thousands of dollars for a canvas, when Velásquez worked for three
+_pesetas_ a day and Goya painted his portraits for a couple of
+doubloons. Deceit, modernism, the audacity of the younger generation
+that lacked scruples, the ignorance of the simpletons that believe the
+newspapers! The only good thing was right there before him. And once
+more shrugging his shoulders scornfully, he lost his expression of
+ironical protest and returned to his thousandth copy of _Los Borrachos_.
+
+Renovales, seeing that the curiosity about him was diminishing, entered
+the little hall that contained the picture of _Las Meninas_. There was
+Tekli in front of the famous canvas that occupies the whole back of the
+room, seated before his easel, with his white hat pushed back to leave
+free his throbbing brow that was contracted with a tenacious insistence
+on accuracy.
+
+Seeing Renovales, he rose hastily, leaving his palette on the piece of
+oil-cloth that protected the floor from spots of paint. Dear master! How
+thankful he was to him for this visit! And he showed him the copy,
+minutely accurate but without the wonderful atmosphere, without the
+miraculous realism of the original. Renovales approved with a nod; he
+admired the patient toil of that gentle ox of art, whose furrows were
+always alike, of geometric precision, without the slightest negligence
+or the least attempt at originality.
+
+"_Ti piace?_" he asked anxiously, looking into his eyes to divine his
+thoughts. "_È vero? È vero?_" he repeated with the uncertainty of a
+child who fears that he is being deceived.
+
+And suddenly calmed by the evidences of Renovales' approval, that kept
+growing more extravagant to conceal his indifference, the Hungarian
+grasped both of his hands and lifted them to his breast.
+
+_"Sono contento, maestro, sono contento."_
+
+He did not want to let Renovales go. Since he had had the generosity to
+come and see his work, he could not let him go away, they would lunch
+together at the hotel where he lived. They would open a bottle of
+Chianti to recall their life in Rome; they would talk of the merry
+Bohemian days of their youth, of those comrades of various nationalities
+that used to gather in the Café del Greco,--some already dead, the rest
+scattered through Europe and America, a few celebrated, the majority
+vegetating in the schools of their native land, dreaming of a final
+masterpiece before which death would probably overtake them.
+
+Renovales felt overcome by the insistence of the Hungarian, who seized
+his hands with a dramatic expression, as though he would die at a
+refusal. Good for the Chianti! They would lunch together, and while
+Tekli was giving a few touches to his work, he would wait for him,
+wandering through the Museo, renewing old memories.
+
+When he returned to the Hall of Velásquez, the assemblage had
+diminished; only the copyists remained bending over their canvases. The
+painter felt anew the influence of the great master. He admired his
+wonderful art, feeling at the same time the intense, historical sadness
+that seemed to emanate from all of his work. Poor Don Diego! He was born
+in the most melancholy period of Spanish history. His sane realism was
+fitted to immortalize the human form in all its naked beauty and fate
+had provided him a period when women looked like turtles, with their
+heads and shoulders peeping out between the double shell of their
+inflated gowns, and when men had a sacerdotal stiffness, raising their
+dark, ill-washed heads above their gloomy garb. He had painted what he
+saw; fear and hypocrisy were reflected in the eyes of that world. In the
+jesters, fools and humpbacks immortalized by Don Diego was revealed the
+forced merriment of a dying nation that must needs find distraction in
+the monstrous and absurd. The hypochondriac temper of a monarchy weak
+in body and fettered in spirit by the terrors of hell, lived in all
+those masterpieces, that inspired at once admiration and sadness. Alas
+for the artistic treasures wasted in immortalizing a period which
+without Velásquez would have fallen into utter oblivion!
+
+Renovales thought, too, of the man, comparing with a feeling of remorse
+the great painter's life with the princely existence of the modern
+masters. Ah, the munificence of kings, their protection of artists, that
+people talked about in their enthusiasm for the past! He thought of the
+peaceful Don Diego and his salary of three _pesetas_ as court painter,
+which he received only at rare intervals; of his glorious name figuring
+among those of jesters and barbers in the list of members of the king's
+household, forced to accept the office of appraiser of masonry to
+improve his situation, of the shame and humiliation of his last years in
+order to gain the Cross of Santiago, denying as a crime before the
+tribunal of the Orders that he had received money for his pictures,
+declaring with servile pride his position as servant of the king, as
+though this title were superior to the glory of an artist. Happy days of
+the present, blessed revolution of modern life, that dignifies the
+artist, and places him under the protection of the public, an impersonal
+sovereign that leaves the creator of beauty free and ends by even
+following him in new-created paths!
+
+Renovales went up to the central gallery in search of another of his
+favorites. The works of Goya filled a large space on both walls. On one
+side the portraits of the kings and queens of the Bourbon decadence;
+heads of monarchs, or princes, crushed under their white wigs; sharp
+feminine eyes, bloodless faces, with their hair combed in the form of a
+tower. The two great painters had coincided in their lives with the
+moral downfall of two dynasties. In the Hall of Velásquez the thin,
+bony, fair-haired kings, of monastic grace and anæmic pallor, with
+their protruding under-jaws, and in their eyes an expression of doubt
+and fear for the salvation of their souls. Here, the corpulent, clumsy
+monarchs, with their huge, heavy noses, fatefully pendulous, as though
+by some mysterious relation they were dragging on the brain, paralyzing
+its functions; their thick underlips, hanging in sensual inertia; their
+eyes, calm as those of cattle, reflecting in their tranquil light
+indifference for everything that did not directly concern their own
+well-being. The Austrians, nervous, restless, vacillating with the fever
+of insanity, riding on theatrical chargers, in dark landscapes, bounded
+by the snowy crests of the Guadarrama, as sad, cold and crystallized as
+the soul of the nation; the Bourbons, peaceful, adipose,
+resting--surfeited--on their huge calves, without any other thought than
+the hunt of the following day or the domestic intrigue that would set
+the family in dissension, deaf to the storms that thundered beyond the
+Pyrenees. The one, surrounded by brutal-faced imbeciles, by gloomy
+pettifoggers, by Infantas with childish faces and the hollow skirts of a
+Virgin's image on an altar; the others bringing as a merry, unconcerned
+retinue, a rabble clad in bright colors, wrapped in scarlet capes or
+lace mantillas, crowned with ornamental combs or masculine hats--a race
+that, without knowing it, was sapping its heroism in picnics at the
+Canal or in grotesque amusements. The lash of invasion aroused them from
+their century-long infancy. The same great artist that for many years
+had portrayed the simple thoughtlessness of this gay people, showy and
+light-hearted as a comic-opera chorus, afterwards painted them, knife in
+hand, attacking the Mamelukes with the agility of monkeys, felling those
+Egyptian centaurs under their slashes, blackened with the smoke of a
+hundred battles, or dying with theatrical pride by the light of a
+lantern in the gloomy solitude of Moncloa, shot by the invaders.
+
+Renovales admired the tragic atmosphere of the canvas before him. The
+executioners hid their faces, leaning on their guns; they were the blind
+executors of fate, a nameless force, and before them rose the pile of
+palpitating, bloody flesh; the dead with strips of flesh torn off by the
+bullets, showing reddish holes, the living with folded arms, defying the
+murderers in a tongue they could not understand, or covering their faces
+with their hands, as though this instinctive movement could save them
+from the lead. A whole people died, to be born again. And beside this
+picture of horror and heroism, in another close to it, he saw Palafox,
+the Leonidas of Saragossa, mounted on horseback, with his stylish
+whiskers and the arrogance of a blacksmith in a captain-general's
+uniform, having in his bearing something of the appearance of a popular
+chieftain, holding in one hand, gloved in buckskin, the curved saber,
+and in the other the reins of his stocky, big-bellied steed.
+
+Renovales thought that art is like light, which acquires color and
+brightness from the objects it touches. Goya had passed through a stormy
+period; he had been a spectator of the resurrection of the soul of the
+people and his painting contained the tumultuous life, the heroic fury
+that you look for in vain in the canvases of that other genius, tied as
+he was to the monotonous existence of the palace, unbroken except by the
+news of distant wars in which they had little interest and whose
+victories, too late to be useful, had the coldness of doubt.
+
+The painter turned away from the dames of Goya, clad in white cambric,
+with their rosebud mouths and with their hair done up like a turban, to
+concentrate his attention on a nude figure, the luminous gleam of whose
+flesh seemed to throw the adjacent canvases in a shadow. He
+contemplated it closely for a long time, bending over the railing till
+the brim of his hat almost touched the canvas. Then he gradually moved
+away, without ceasing to look at it, until, at last, he sat down on a
+bench, still facing the picture with his eyes fixed upon it.
+
+"Goya's _Maja_. The _Maja Desnuda!_"
+
+He spoke aloud, without realizing it, as if his words were the
+inevitable outburst of the thoughts that rushed into his mind and seemed
+to pass back and forth behind the lenses of his eyes. His expressions of
+admiration were in different tones, marking a descending scale of
+memories.
+
+The painter looked with delight at the gracefully delicate form,
+luminous, as though within it burned the flame of life, showing through
+the pearl-pale flesh. A shadow, scarcely perceptible, veiled in mystery
+of her femininity; the light traced a bright spot on her smoothly
+rounded knees and once more the shadow reached down to her tiny feet
+with their delicate toes, rosy and babyish.
+
+The woman was small, graceful, and dainty; the Spanish Venus with no
+more flesh than was necessary to cover her supple, shapely frame with
+softly curving outlines. Her amber eyes that flashed slyly, were
+disconcerting with their gaze; her mouth had in its graceful corners the
+fleeting touch of an eternal smile; on her cheeks, elbows and feet the
+pink tone showed the transparency and the moist brilliancy of those
+shells that open their mysterious colors in the secret depths of the
+sea.
+
+"Goya's _Maja_. The _Maja Desnuda!_"
+
+He no longer said these words aloud, but his thought and his expression
+repeated them, his smile was their echo.
+
+Renovales was not alone. From time to time groups of visitors passed
+back and forth between his eyes and the picture, talking loudly. The
+tread of heavy feet shook the wooden floor. It was noon and the
+bricklayers from nearby buildings were taking advantage of the noon hour
+to explore those salons as if it were a new world, delighting in the
+warm air of the furnaces. As they went, they left footprints of plaster
+on the floor; they called out to each other to share their admiration
+before a picture; they were impatient to take it all in at a single
+glance; they waxed enthusiastic over the warriors in their shining armor
+or the elaborate uniforms of olden times. The cleverest among them
+served as guides to their companions, driving them impatiently. They had
+been there the day before. Go ahead! There was still a lot to see! And
+they ran toward the inner halls with the breathless curiosity of men who
+tread on new ground and expect something marvelous to rise before their
+steps.
+
+Amid this rush of simple admirers there passed, too, some groups of
+Spanish ladies. All did the same thing before Goya's work, as if they
+had been previously coached. They went from picture to picture,
+commenting on the fashions of the past, feeling a sort of longing for
+the curious old crinolines and the broad mantillas with the high combs.
+Suddenly they became serious, drew their lips together and started at a
+quick pace for the end of the gallery. Instinct warned them. Their
+restless eyes felt hurt by the nude in the distance; they seemed to
+scent the famous _Maja_ before they saw her and they kept on--erect,
+with severe countenances, just as if they were annoyed by some rude
+fellow's advances in the street--passing in front of the picture without
+turning their faces, without seeing even the adjacent pictures nor
+stopping till they reached the Hall of Murillo.
+
+It was the hatred for the nude, the Christian, century-old abomination
+of Nature and truth, that rose instinctively to protest against the
+toleration of such horrors in a public building which was peopled with
+saints, kings and ascetics.
+
+Renovales worshiped the canvas with ardent devotion, and placed it in a
+class by itself. It was the first manifestation in Spanish history of
+art that was free from scruples, unhampered by prejudice. Three
+centuries of painting, several generations of glorious names, succeeded
+one another with wonderful fertility; but not until Goya had the Spanish
+brush dared to trace the form of a woman's body, the divine nakedness
+that among all peoples has been the first inspiration of nascent art.
+Renovales remembered another nude, the Venus of Velásquez, preserved
+abroad. But that work had not been spontaneous; it was a commission of
+the monarch who, at the same time that he was paying foreigners lavishly
+for their studies in the nude, wished to have a similar canvas by his
+court-painter.
+
+Religious oppression had obscured art for centuries. Human beauty
+terrified the great artists, who painted with a cross on their breasts
+and a rosary on their sword-hilts. Bodies were hidden under the stiff,
+heavy folds of sackcloth or the grotesque, courtly crinoline, and the
+painter never ventured to guess what was beneath them, looking at the
+model, as the devout worshiper contemplates the hollow mantle of the
+Virgin, not knowing whether it contains a body or three sticks to hold
+up the head. The joy of life was a sin. In vain a sun fairer than that
+of Venice shone on Spanish soil, futile was the light that burned upon
+the land with a brighter glow than that of Flanders: Spanish art was
+dark, lifeless, sober, even after it knew the works of Titian. The
+Renaissance, that in the rest of the world worshiped the nude as the
+supreme work of Nature, was covered here with the monk's cowl or the
+beggar's rags. The shining landscapes were dark and gloomy when they
+reached the canvas; under the brush the land of the sun appeared with a
+gray sky and grass that was a mournful green; the heads had a monkish
+gravity. The artist placed in his pictures not what surrounded him, but
+what he had within him, a piece of his soul--and his soul was fettered
+by the fear of dangers in the present life and torments in the life to
+come; it was black--black with sadness, as if it were dyed in the soot
+of the fires of the autos-de-fé.
+
+That naked woman with her curly head resting on her folded arms was the
+awakening of an art that had lived in isolation. The slight frame, that
+scarcely rested on the green divan and the fine lace cushions, seemed on
+the point of rising in the air with the mighty impulse of resurrection.
+
+Renovales thought of the two masters, equally great, and still so
+different. One had the imposing majesty of famous monuments--serene,
+correct, cold, filling the horizon of history with their colossal mass,
+growing old in glory without the centuries opening the least crack in
+their marble walls. On all sides the same façade--noble, symmetrical,
+calm, without the vagaries of caprice. It was reason--solid,
+well-balanced, alien to enthusiasm and weakness, without feverish haste.
+The other was as great as a mountain, with the fantastic disorder of
+Nature, covered with tortuous inequalities. On one side the wild, barren
+cliff; beyond, the glen, covered with blossoming heath; below, the
+garden with its perfumes and birds; on the heights, the crown of dark
+clouds, heavy with thunder and lightning. It was imagination in
+unbridled career, with breathless halts and new flights--its brow in the
+infinite and its feet implanted on earth.
+
+The life of Don Diego was summed up in these words: "He had painted."
+That was his whole biography. Never in his travels in Spain and Italy
+did he feel curious to see anything but pictures. In the court of the
+Poet-king, he had vegetated amid gallantries and masquerades, calm as a
+monk of painting, always standing before his canvas and model--to-day a
+jester, to-morrow a little Infanta--without any other desire than to
+rise in rank among the members of the royal household, to see a cross of
+red cloth sewed on his black jerkin. He was a lofty soul, enclosed in a
+phlegmatic body that never tormented him with nervous desires nor
+disturbed the calm of his work with violent passions. When he died the
+good Dona Juana, his wife, died too, as though they sought each other,
+unable to remain apart after their long, uneventful pilgrimage through
+the world.
+
+Goya "had lived." His life was that of the nobleman-artist--a stormy
+novel, full of mysterious amours. His pupils, on parting the curtains of
+his studio, saw the silk of royal skirts on their master's knees. The
+dainty duchesses of the period resorted to that robust Aragonese of
+rough, manly gallantry to have him paint their cheeks, laughing like mad
+at these intimate touches. When he contemplated some divine beauty on
+the tumbled bed, he transferred her form to the canvas by an
+irresistible impulse, an imperious necessity of reproducing beauty; and
+the legend that floated about the Spanish artist connected an
+illustrious name with all the beauties whom his brush immortalized.
+
+To paint without fear or prejudice, to take delight in reproducing on
+canvas the glory of the nude, the lustrous amber of woman's flesh with
+its pale roses like a sea-shell, was Renovales' desire and envy; to live
+like the famous Don Francisco--a free bird with restless, shining
+plumage in the midst of the monotony of the human barn-yard; in his
+passions, in his diversions, in his tastes, to be different from the
+majority of men, since he was already different from them in his way of
+appreciating life.
+
+But, ah! his existence was like that of Don Diego--unbroken, monotonous,
+laid out by level in a straight line. He painted, but he did not live.
+People praised his work for the accuracy with which he reproduced
+Nature, for the gleam of light, for the indefinable color of the
+atmosphere, and the exterior of things; but something was lacking,
+something that stirred within him and fought in vain to leap the vulgar
+barriers of daily existence.
+
+The memory of the romantic life of Goya made him think of his own life.
+People called him a master; they bought everything he painted at good
+prices, especially if it was in accordance with some one else's tastes
+and contrary to his artistic desire; he enjoyed a calm existence, full
+of comforts; in his studio, almost as splendid as a palace, the façade
+of which was reproduced in the illustrated magazines, he had a wife who
+was convinced of his genius and a daughter who was almost a woman and
+who made the troop of his intimate pupils stammer with embarrassment.
+The only evidences of his Bohemian past that remained were his soft felt
+hats, his long beard, his tangled hair and a certain carelessness in his
+dress; but when his position as a "national celebrity" demanded it, he
+took out of his wardrobe a dress suit with the lapel covered with the
+insignia of honorary orders and played his part in official receptions.
+He had thousands of dollars in the bank. In his studio, palette in hand,
+he conferred with his broker, discussing what sort of investments he
+ought to make with the year's profits. His name awakened no surprise or
+aversion in high society, where it was fashionable for ladies to have
+their portraits painted by him.
+
+In the early days he had provoked scandal and protests by his boldness
+in color and his revolutionary way of seeing Nature, but there was not
+connected with his name the least offence against the conventions of
+society. His women were women of the people, picturesque and repugnant;
+the only flesh that he had shown on his canvases was that of a sweaty
+laborer or the chubby child. He was an honored master, who cultivated
+his stupendous ability with the same calm that he showed in his business
+affairs.
+
+What was lacking in his life? Ah! Renovales smiled ironically. His whole
+life suddenly came to mind in a tumultuous rush of memories. Once more
+he fixed his glance on that woman, shining white like a pearl amphora,
+with her arms above her head, her breasts erect and triumphant, her eyes
+resting on him, as if she had known him for many years, and he repeated
+mentally with an expression of bitterness and dejection:
+
+"Goya's _Maja_, the _Maja Desnuda_!"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+As Mariano Renovales recalled the first years of his life, his memory,
+always sensitive to exterior impressions, called up the ceaseless clang
+of hammers. From the rising of the sun till the earth began to darken
+with the shadows of twilight the iron sang or groaned on the anvil,
+jarring the walls of the house and the floor of the garret, where
+Mariano used to play, lying on the floor at the feet of a pale, sickly
+woman with serious, deep-set eyes, who frequently dropped her sewing to
+kiss the little one with sudden violence, as though she feared she would
+not see him again.
+
+Those tireless hammers that had accompanied Mariano's birth, made him
+jump out of bed as soon as day broke and go down to the shop to warm
+himself beside the glowing forge. His father, a good-natured
+Cyclops--hairy and blackened--walked back and forth, turning over the
+irons, picking up files, giving orders to his assistants with loud
+shouts, in order to be heard in the din of the hammering. Two sturdy
+fellows, stripped to the waist, swung their arms, panting over the
+anvil, and the iron--now red, now golden--leaped in bright showers,
+scattered in crackling sprays, peopling the black atmosphere of the shop
+with a swarm of fiery flies that died away in the soot of the corners.
+
+"Take care, little one!" said the father, protecting his delicate
+curly-haired head with one of his great hands.
+
+The little fellow felt attracted by the colors of the glowing iron, till
+with the thoughtlessness of childhood he sometimes tried to pick up the
+fragments that glowed on the ground like fallen stars.
+
+His father would push him out of the shop, and outside the door--black
+with soot--Mariano could see stretching out below him in the flood of
+sunlight the fields with their red soil cut into geometric figures by
+stone walls; at the bottom the valley with groups of poplars bordering
+the winding, crystal stream, and before him the mountains, covered to
+the very tops with dark pine woods. The shop was in the suburbs of a
+town and from it and the villages of the valley came the jobs that
+supported the blacksmith--new axles for carts, plowshares, scythes,
+shovels, and pitchforks in need of repair.
+
+The incessant pounding of the hammers seemed to stir up the little
+fellow, inspiring him with a fever of activity, tearing him from his
+childish amusements. When he was eight years old, he used to seize the
+rope of the bellows and pull it, delighting in the shower of sparks that
+the current of air drove out of the lighted coals. The Cyclops was
+gratified at the strength of his son, robust and vigorous like all the
+men of his family, with a pair of fists that inspired a wholesome
+respect in all the village lads. He was one of his own blood. From his
+poor mother, weak and sickly, he inherited only his propensity toward
+silence and isolation that sometimes, when the fever of activity died
+out in him, kept him for hours at a time watching the fields, the sky or
+the brooks that came tumbling down over the pebbles to join the stream
+at the bottom of the valley.
+
+The boy hated school, showing a holy horror of letters. His strong hands
+shook with uncertainty when he tried to write a word. On the other hand,
+his father and the other people in the shop admired the ease with which
+he could reproduce objects in a simple, ingenuous drawing, in which no
+detail of naturalness was lacking. His pockets were always full of bits
+of charcoal and he never saw a wall or stone that had a suggestion of
+whiteness, without at once tracing on it a copy of the objects that
+struck his eyes because of some marked peculiarity. The outside walls of
+the shop were black with little Mariano's drawings. Along the walls ran
+the pigs of Saint Anthony, with their puckered snouts and twisted tails,
+that wandered through the village and were supported by public charity,
+to be raffled on the festival of the saint. And in the midst of this
+stout procession stood out the profiles of the blacksmith and all the
+workmen of the shop, with an inscription beneath, that no doubt might
+arise as to their identity.
+
+"Come here, woman," the blacksmith would shout to his sick wife when he
+discovered a new sketch. "Come and see what our son has done. A devil of
+a boy!"
+
+And influenced by this enthusiasm, he no longer complained when Mariano
+ran away from school and the bellows rope to spend the whole day running
+through the valley or the village, a piece of charcoal in his hand,
+covering the rocks of the mountain and the house walls with black lines,
+to the despair of the neighbors. In the tavern in the Plaza Mayor he had
+traced the heads of the most constant customers, and the innkeeper
+pointed them out proudly, forbidding anyone to touch the wall for fear
+the sketches would disappear. This work was a source of vanity to the
+blacksmith when Sundays, after mass, he went in to drink a glass with
+his friends. On the wall of the rectory he had traced a Virgin, before
+which the most pious old women in the village stopped with deep sighs.
+
+The blacksmith with a flush of satisfaction accepted all the praises
+that were showered on the little fellow as if they belonged in large
+part to himself. Where had that prodigy come from, when all the rest of
+his family were such brutes? And he nodded affirmatively when the
+village notables spoke of doing something for the boy. To be sure, he
+did not know what to do, but they were right; his Mariano was not
+destined to hammer iron like his father. He might become as great a
+personage as Don Rafael, a gentleman who painted saints in the capital
+of the province and was a teacher of painting in a big house, full of
+pictures, in the city. During the summer he came with his family to live
+in an estate in the valley.
+
+This Don Rafael was a man of imposing gravity; a saint with a large
+family of children, who wore a frock-coat as if it were a cassock and
+spoke with the suavity of a friar through his white beard that covered
+his thin, pink cheeks. In the village church they had a wonderful
+picture painted by him, a _Purísima_, whose soft glowing colors made the
+legs of the pious tremble. Besides, the eyes of the image had the
+marvelous peculiarity of looking straight at those who contemplated it,
+following them even though they changed position. A veritable miracle.
+It seemed impossible that that good gentleman who came up every morning
+in the summer to hear mass in the village, had painted that supernatural
+work. An Englishman had tried to buy it for its weight in gold. No one
+had seen the Englishman, but every one smiled sarcastically when they
+commented on the offer. Yes, indeed, they were likely to let the picture
+go! Let the heretics rage with all their millions. The _Purísima_ would
+stay in her chapel to the envy of the whole world--and especially of the
+neighboring villages.
+
+When the parish priest went to visit Don Rafael to speak to him about
+the blacksmith's son, the great man already knew about his ability. He
+had seen his drawings in the village; the boy had some talent and it was
+a pity not to guide him in the right path. After this came the visits
+of the blacksmith and his son, both trembling when they found themselves
+in the attic of the country house that the great painter had converted
+into a studio, seeing close at hand the pots of color, the oily palette,
+the brushes and those pale blue canvases on which the rosy, chubby
+cheeks of the cherubim or the ecstatic face of the Mother of God were
+beginning to assume form.
+
+At the end of the summer the good blacksmith decided to follow Don
+Rafael's advice. As long as he was so good as to consent to helping the
+boy, he was not going to be the one to interfere with his good fortune.
+The shop gave him enough to live on. All it meant was to work a few
+years longer, to support himself till the end of his life beside the
+anvil, without an assistant or a successor. His son was born to be
+somebody, and it was a serious sin to stop his progress by scorning the
+help of his good protector.
+
+His mother, who constantly grew weaker and more sickly, cried as if the
+journey to the capital of the province were to the end of the world.
+
+"Good-by, my boy. I shall never see you again."
+
+And in truth it was the last time that Mariano saw that pale face with
+its great expressionless eyes, now almost wiped out of his memory like a
+whitish spot in which, in spite of all his efforts, he could not succeed
+in restoring the outline of the features.
+
+In the city his life was radically different. Then for the first time he
+understood what it was his hands were striving for as they moved the
+charcoal over the whitewashed walls. Art was revealed to his eyes in
+those silent afternoons, passed in the convent where the provincial
+museum was situated, while his master, Don Rafael, argued with other
+gentlemen in the professor's hall, or signed papers in the secretary's
+office.
+
+Mariano lived at his protector's house, at once his servant and his
+pupil. He carried letters to the dean and the other canons, who were
+friends of his master and who accompanied him on his walks or spent
+social evenings in his studio. More than once he visited the locutories
+of nunneries, to deliver through the heavy gratings presents from Don
+Rafael to certain black and white shadows, which attracted by this
+sturdy young country boy, and aware that he meant to be a painter,
+overwhelmed him with the eager questions born of their seclusion. Before
+he went away they would hand him, through the revolving window, cakes
+and candied lemons or some other goody, and then, with a word of advice,
+would say good-by in their thin, soft voices, which sifted through the
+iron of the gratings.
+
+"Be a good boy, little Mariano. Study, pray. Be a good Christian, the
+Lord will protect you and perhaps you will get to be as great a painter
+as Don Rafael, who is one of the first in the world."
+
+How the master laughed at the memory of the childish simplicity that
+made him see in his master the most marvelous painter on earth!...
+Mornings, when he attended the classes in the School of Fine Arts, he
+grew angry at his comrades, a disrespectful rabble, brought up in the
+streets, sons of mechanics, who, as soon as the professor turned his
+back, pelted each other with the crumbs of bread meant to wipe out their
+drawings, and cursed Don Rafael, calling him a "Christer" and a
+"Jesuit."
+
+The afternoon Mariano passed in the studio, at his master's side. How
+excited he was the first time he placed a palette in his hand and
+allowed him to copy on an old canvas a child St. John which he had
+finished for a society!... While the boy with his forehead wrinkled in
+his eagerness, tried to imitate his master's work, he listened to the
+good advice that the master gave him without looking up from the canvas
+over which his angelic brush was running.
+
+Painting must be religious; the first pictures in the world had been
+inspired by religion; outside of it, life offered nothing but base
+materialism, loathsome sins. Painting must be ideal, beautiful. It must
+always represent pretty subjects, reproduce things as they ought to be,
+not as they really are, and above all, look up to heaven, since there is
+true life, not on this earth, a valley of tears. Mariano must modify his
+instincts--that was his master's advice--must lose his fondness for
+drawing coarse subjects--people as he saw them, animals in all their
+material brutality, landscapes in the same form as his eyes gazed upon.
+
+He must have idealism. Many painters were almost saints; only thus could
+they reflect celestial beauty in the faces of their madonnas. And poor
+Mariano strove to be ideal, to catch a little of that beatific serenity
+which surrounded his master.
+
+Little by little he came to understand the methods which Don Rafael
+employed to create these masterpieces which called forth cries of
+admiration from his circle of canons and the rich ladies that gave him
+commissions for pictures. When he intended to begin one of his
+_Purísimas_, which were slowly invading the churches and convents of the
+province, he arose early and returned to his studio after mass and
+communion. In this way he felt an inner strength, a calm enthusiasm,
+and, if he felt depressed in the midst of the work, he once more had
+recourse to this inspiring medicine.
+
+The artist, besides, must be pure. He had taken a vow of chastity after
+he had reached the age of fifty, somewhat late to be sure, but it was
+not because he had not known before this certain means of reaching the
+perfect idealism of a celestial painter. His wife, who had grown old in
+her countless confinements, exhausted by the tiresome fidelity and
+virtue of the master, was no longer anything but the companion who gave
+the responses when he prayed his rosaries and Trisagia at night. He had
+several daughters, who weighed on his conscience like the reproachful
+memory of a disgraceful materialism, but some were already nuns and the
+others were on the way, while the idealism of the artist increased as
+these evidences of his impurity disappeared from the house and went to
+hide away in a convent where they upheld the artistic prestige of their
+father.
+
+Sometimes the great painter hesitated before a _Purísima_, which was
+always the same, as if he painted it with a stencil. Then he spoke
+mysteriously to his disciple:
+
+"Mariano, tell the gentlemen not to come to-morrow. We have a model."
+
+And when the studio was closed to the priests and the other respectable
+friends, with heavy step in came Rodríguez, a policeman, with a
+cigarette stub under his heavy bristling mustache and one hand on the
+handle of his sword. Dismissed from the gendarmerie for intoxication and
+cruelty, and finding himself without employment, by some strange chance
+he began to devote himself to serving as a painter's model. The pious
+artist, who held him in a sort of terror, nagged by his constant
+petitions, had secured for him this position as policeman, and Rodríguez
+took advantage of every opportunity to show his rough appreciation,
+slapping the master's shoulders with his great hands and blowing in his
+face, his breath redolent with nicotine and alcohol.
+
+"Don Rafael, you are my father. If anybody touches you, I'll fix him,
+whoever he is."
+
+And the ascetic artist, with a feeling of satisfaction at this
+protection, blushed and waved his hands in protest against the frankness
+of the rude fellow with his threats for the men he would "fix."
+
+He threw his helmet on the ground, handed his heavy sword to Mariano,
+and like a man that knows his duty, took out of the bottom of a chest a
+white woolen tunic and a piece of blue cloth like a cloak, placing both
+garments on his body with the skill of practice.
+
+Mariano looked at him with astonished eyes but without any temptation to
+laugh. They were mysteries of art, surprises that were reserved only for
+those who, like him, had the good fortune to live on terms of intimacy
+with the great master.
+
+"Ready, Rodríguez?" Don Rafael asked impatiently.
+
+And Rodríguez, erect in his bath robe with the blue rag hanging from his
+shoulders, clasped his hands and lifted his fierce gaze to the ceiling,
+without ceasing to suck the stub that singed his mustache. The master
+did not need the model except for the robes of the figure, to study the
+folds of the celestial garment, which must not reveal the slightest
+evidence of human contour. The possibility of copying a woman had never
+passed through his imagination. That was falling into materialism,
+glorifying the flesh, inviting temptation; Rodríguez was all he needed;
+one must be an idealist.
+
+The model continued in his mystic attitude with his body lost in the
+innumerable folds of his blue and white raiment, while under it the
+square toes of his army boots stuck out, and he held up his grotesque,
+flat head, crowned with bristling hair, coughing and choking from the
+smoke of the cigar, without ceasing to look up and without separating
+his hands clasped in an attitude of worship.
+
+Sometimes, tired out by the industrious silence of the master and the
+pupil, Rodríguez uttered a few grumbles that little by little took the
+form of words and finally developed into the story of the deeds of his
+heroic period, when he was a rural policeman and "could take a shot at
+anyone and pay for it afterward with a report." The _Purísima_ grew
+excited at these memories. His hands separated with a tremble of
+murderous joy, the carefully arranged folds were disturbed, his
+bloodshot eyes no longer looked heavenward, and with a hoarse voice he
+told of tremendous beatings he administered, of men who fell to the
+ground writhing with pain, the shooting of prisoners which afterwards
+were reported as attempts to escape; and to give greater relief to this
+autobiography which he declaimed with bestial pride, he sprinkled his
+words with interjections as vulgar as they were lacking in respect for
+the first personages of the heavenly court.
+
+"Rodríguez, Rodríguez!" exclaimed the master, horror-stricken.
+
+"At your command, Don Rafael."
+
+And the _Purísima_, after passing the stub from one side of his mouth to
+the other, once more folded his hands, straightened up, showing his
+red-striped trousers under the tunic, and lost his gaze on high, smiling
+with ecstasy, as if he contemplated on the ceiling all his heroic deeds
+of which he felt so proud.
+
+Mariano was in despair before his canvas. He could never imitate his
+illustrious master. He was incapable of painting anything but what he
+saw, and his brush, after reproducing the blue and white raiment,
+stopped, hesitating at the face, calling in vain on imagination. After
+futile efforts it was the grotesque mask of Rodríguez that appeared on
+the canvas.
+
+And the pupil had a sincere admiration for the ability of Don Rafael,
+for that pale head veiled in the light of its halo, a pretty,
+expressionless face of childish beauty, which took the place of the
+policeman's fierce head in the picture.
+
+This sleight-of-hand seemed to the boy the most astounding evidence of
+art. When would he reach the easy prestidigitation of his master!
+
+With time the difference between Don Rafael and his pupil became more
+marked. At school his comrades gathered around him, recognizing his
+superiority and praising his drawings. Some professors, enemies of his
+master, lamented that such talent should be lost beside that
+"saint-painter." Don Rafael was surprised at what Mariano did outside of
+his studio--figures and landscapes, directly observed which, according
+to him, breathed the brutality of life.
+
+His circle of serious gentlemen began to discover some merit in the
+pupil.
+
+"He will never reach your height, Don Rafael," they said. "He lacks
+unction, he has no idealism, he will never paint a good Virgin--but as a
+worldly painter he has a future."
+
+The master, who loved the boy for his submissive nature and the purity
+of his habits, tried in vain to make him follow the right way. If he
+would only imitate him, his fortune was made. He would die without a
+successor and his studio and his fame would be his. The boy only had to
+see how, little by little, like a good ant of the Lord, the master had
+gathered together a fair sized future with his brush. By virtue of his
+idealism, he had his country house there in the village, and no end of
+estates, the tenants of which came and visited him in his studio,
+carrying on endless discussions over the payment and amount of the rents
+in front of the poetic Virgins. The Church was poor because of the
+impiety of the times, it could not pay as generously as in other
+centuries, but commissions were numerous, and a Virgin in all her
+purity was a matter of only three days--but young Renovales made a
+troubled, wry face, as if a painful sacrifice were demanded of him.
+
+"I can't, Master. I'm an idiot. I don't know how to invent things. I
+paint only what I see."
+
+And when he began to see naked bodies in the so-called "life" class he
+devoted himself zealously to this study, as if the flesh caused in him
+the most violent intoxication. Don Rafael was appalled by finding in the
+corners of his house sketches that portrayed shameful nudes in all their
+reality. Besides, the progress of his pupil caused him some uneasiness;
+he saw in his painting a vigor that he himself had never had. He even
+noted some falling-off in his circle of admirers. The good canons, as
+always, admired his Virgins, but some of them had their portraits
+painted by Mariano, praising the skill of his brush.
+
+One day he said to his pupil, firmly:
+
+"You know that I love you as I would a son, Mariano, but you are wasting
+your time with me. I cannot teach you anything. Your place is somewhere
+else. I thought you might go to Madrid. There you will find men of your
+stamp."
+
+His mother was dead; his father was still in the blacksmith shop, and
+when he saw him come home with several duros, the pay for portraits he
+had made, he looked on this sum as a fortune. It did not seem possible
+that anyone would give money in exchange for colors. A letter from Don
+Rafael convinced him. Since that wise gentleman advised that his son
+should go to Madrid, he must agree.
+
+"Go to Madrid, my boy, and try to make money soon, for your father is
+old and will not always be able to help you."
+
+At the age of sixteen, Renovales landed in Madrid and finding himself
+alone, with only his wishes for his guide, devoted himself zealously to
+his work. He spent the morning in the Museo del Prado, copying all the
+heads in Velásquez's pictures. He felt that till then he had been blind.
+Besides, he worked in an attic studio with some other companions and
+evenings painted water-colors. By selling these and some copies, he
+managed to eke out the small allowance his father sent him.
+
+He recalled with a sort of homesickness those years of poverty, of real
+misery, the cold nights in his wretched bed, the irritating
+meals--Heaven knows what was in them--eaten in a bar-room near the
+Teatro Real; the discussions in the corner of a café, under the hostile
+glances of the waiters who were provoked that a dozen long-haired youths
+should occupy several tables and order all together only three coffees
+and many bottles of water.
+
+The light-hearted young fellows stood their misery without difficulty
+and, to make up for it, what a fill of fancies they had, what a glorious
+feast of hopes! A new discovery every day. Renovales ran through the
+realm of art like a wild colt, seeing new horizons spreading out before
+him, and his career caused an outburst of scandal that amounted to
+premature celebrity. The old men said that he was the only boy who "had
+the stuff in him"; his comrades declared that he was a "real painter,"
+and in their iconoclastic enthusiasm compared his inexperienced works
+with those of the recognized old masters--"poor humdrum artists" on
+whose bald pates they felt obliged to vent their spleen in order to show
+the superiority of the younger generation.
+
+Renovales' candidacy for the fellowship at Rome caused a veritable
+revolution. The younger set, who swore by him and considered him their
+illustrious captain, broke out in threats, fearful lest the "old boys"
+should sacrifice their idol.
+
+When at last his manifest superiority won him the fellowship, there were
+banquets in his honor, articles in the papers, his picture was published
+in the illustrated magazines, and even the old blacksmith made a trip to
+Madrid, to breathe with tearful emotion part of the incense that was
+burned for his son.
+
+In Rome a cruel disappointment awaited Renovales. His countrymen
+received him rather coldly. The younger men looked on him as a rival and
+waited for his next works with the hope of a failure; the old men who
+lived far from their fatherland examined him with malignant curiosity.
+"And so that big chap was the blacksmith's son, who caused so much
+disturbance among the ignorant people at home!... Madrid was not Rome.
+They would soon see what that _genius_ could do!"
+
+Renovales did nothing in the first months of his stay in Rome. He
+answered with a shrug of his shoulders those who asked for his pictures
+with evident innuendo. He had come there not to paint but to study; that
+was what the State was paying him for. And he spent more than half a
+year drawing, always drawing in the famous art galleries, where, pencil
+in hand, he studied the famous works. The paint boxes remained unopened
+in one corner of the studio.
+
+Before long he came to detest the great city, because of the life the
+artists led in it. What was the use of fellowships? People studied less
+there than in other places. Rome was not a school, it was a market. The
+painting merchants set up their business there, attracted by the
+gathering of artists. All--old and beginners, famous and unknown--felt
+the temptation of money; all were seduced by the easy comforts of life,
+producing works for sale, painting pictures in accordance with the
+suggestions of some German Jews who frequented the studios, designating
+the sizes and the types that were in style in order to spread them over
+Europe and America.
+
+When Renovales visited the studios, he saw nothing but _genre_ pictures,
+sometimes gentlemen in long dress coats, others tattered Moors or
+Calabrian peasants. They were pretty, faultless paintings, for which
+they used as models a manikin, or the families of _ciociari_ whom they
+hired every morning in the Piazza di Espagna beside the Sealinata of the
+Trinity; the everlasting country-woman, swarthy and black-eyed, with
+great hoops in her ears and wearing a green skirt, a black waist and a
+white head-dress caught up on her hair with large pins; the usual old
+man with sandals, a woolen cloak and a pointed hat with spiral bands on
+his snowy head that was a fitting model for the Eternal Father. The
+artists judged each other's ability by the number of thousand lire they
+took in during a year; they spoke with respect of the famous masters who
+made a fortune out of the millionaires of Paris and Chicago for
+easel-pictures that nobody saw. Renovales was indignant. This sort of
+art was almost like that of his first master, even if it was "worldly"
+as Don Rafael had said. And that was what they sent him to Rome for!
+
+Unpopular with his countrymen because of his brusque ways, his rude
+tongue and his honesty, which made him refuse all commissions from the
+art merchants, he sought the society of artists from other countries.
+Among the cosmopolitan group of young painters who were quartered in
+Rome, Renovales soon became popular.
+
+His energy, his exuberant spirits, made him a congenial, merry comrade,
+when he appeared in the studios of the Via di Babuino or in the
+chocolate rooms and cafés of the Corso, where the artists of different
+nationalities gathered in friendly company.
+
+Mariano, at the age of twenty, was an athletic fellow, a worthy scion
+of the man who was pounding iron from morning till night in a far away
+corner of Spain. One day an English youth, a friend of his, read him a
+page of Ruskin in his honor. "The plastic arts are essentially
+athletic." An invalid, a half paralyzed man, might be a great poet, a
+celebrated musician, but to be a Michael Angelo or a Titian a man must
+have not merely a privileged soul, but a vigorous body. Leonardo da
+Vinci broke a horseshoe in his hands; the sculptors of the Renaissance
+worked huge blocks of marble with their titanic arms or chipped off the
+bronze with their gravers; the great painters were often architects and,
+covered with dust, moved huge masses. Renovales listened thoughtfully to
+the words of the great English æstheticist. He, too, was a strong soul
+in an athlete's body.
+
+The appetites of his youth never went beyond the manly intoxications of
+strength and movement. Attracted by the abundance of models which Rome
+offered, he often undressed a _ciociara_ in his studio, delighting in
+drawing the forms of her body. He laughed, like the big giant that he
+was, he spoke to her with the same freedom as if she were one of the
+poor women that came out to stop him at night as he returned alone to
+the Academy of Spain, but when the work was over and she was
+dressed--out with her! He had the chastity of strong men. He worshiped
+the flesh, but only to copy its lines. The animal contact, the chance
+meeting, without love, without attraction, with the inner reserve of two
+people who do not know each other and who look on each other with
+suspicion, filled him with shame. What he wanted to do was to study, and
+women only served as a hindrance in great undertakings. He consumed the
+surplus of his energy in athletic exercise. After one of his feats of
+strength, which filled his comrades with enthusiasm, he would come in
+fresh, serene, indifferent, as though he were coming out of a bath. He
+fenced with the French painters of the Villa Medici; learned to box with
+Englishmen and Americans; organized, with some German artists,
+excursions to a grove near Rome, which were talked about for days in the
+cafés of the Corso. He drank countless healths with his companions to
+the Kaiser whom he did not know and for whom he did not care a rap. He
+would thunder in his noisy voice the traditional _Gaudeamus Igitur_ and
+finally would catch two models of the party around the waist and with
+his arms stretched out like a cross carry them through the woods till he
+dropped them on the grass as if they were feathers. Afterwards he would
+smile with satisfaction at the admiration of those good Germans, many of
+them sickly and near-sighted, who compared him with Siegfried and the
+other muscular heroes of their warlike mythology.
+
+In the Carnival season, when the Spaniards organized a cavalcade of the
+Quixote, he undertook to represent the knight Pentapolin--"him of the
+rolled-up sleeves,"--and in the Corso there were applause and cries of
+admiration for the huge biceps that the knight-errant, erect on his
+horse, revealed. When the spring nights came, the artists marched in a
+procession across the city to the Jewish quarter to buy the first
+artichokes--the popular dish in Rome, in the preparation of which an old
+Hebrew woman was famous. Renovales went at the head of the
+_carciofalatta_, bearing the banner, starting the songs which were
+alternated with the cries of all sorts of animals; and his comrades
+marched behind him, reckless and insolent under the protection of such a
+chieftain. As long as Mariano was with them there was no danger. They
+told the story that in the alleys of the Trastevere he had given a
+deadly beating to two bullies of the district, after taking away their
+stilettos.
+
+Suddenly the athlete shut himself up in the Academy and did not come
+down to the city. For several days they talked about him at the
+gatherings of artists. He was painting; an exhibition that was going to
+take place in Madrid was close at hand and he wanted to take to it a
+picture to justify his fellowship. He kept the door of his studio closed
+to everyone, he did not permit comment nor advice, the canvas would
+appear just as he conceived it. His comrades soon forgot him and
+Renovales ended his work in seclusion, and left for his country with it.
+
+It was a complete success, the first important step on the road that was
+to lead him to fame. Now he remembered with shame, with remorse, the
+glorious uproar his picture "The Victory of Pavia" stirred up. People
+crowded in front of the huge canvas, forgetting the rest of the
+Exhibition. And as, at that time, the Government was strong, the Cortes
+was closed and there was no serious accident in any of the bull-rings,
+the newspapers, for lack of any more lively event, hastened in cheap
+rivalry to reproduce the picture, to talk about it, publishing portraits
+of the author, profiles, as well as front views, large and small,
+expatiating on his life in Rome and his eccentricities, and recalled
+with tears of emotion the poor old man who far away in his village was
+pounding iron, hardly knowing of his son's glory.
+
+With one bound Renovales passed from obscurity to the light of
+apotheosis. The older men whose duty it was to judge his work became
+benevolent and extended kindly sympathy. The little tiger was getting
+tame. Renovales had seen the world and now he was coming back to the
+good traditions; he was going to be a painter like the rest. His picture
+had portions that were like Velásquez, fragments worthy of Goya, corners
+that recalled El Greco; there was everything in it, except Renovales,
+and this amalgam of reminiscences was its chief merit, what attracted
+general applause and won it the first medal.
+
+A magnificent debut it was. A dowager duchess, a great protectress of
+the arts, who never bought a picture or a statue but who entertained at
+her table painters and sculptors of renown, finding in this an
+inexpensive pleasure and a certain distinction as an illustrious lady,
+wished to make Renovales' acquaintance. He overcame the stand-offishness
+of his nature that kept him away from all social relations. Why should
+he not know high society? He could go wherever other men could. And he
+put on his first dress-coat, and after the banquets of the duchess,
+where his way of arguing with members of the Academy provoked peals of
+merry laughter, he visited other salons and for several weeks was the
+idol of society which, to be sure, was somewhat scandalized by his faux
+pas, but still pleased with the timidity that overcame him after his
+daring sallies. The younger set liked him because he handled a sword
+like a Saint George. Although a painter and son of a blacksmith, he was
+in every way a respectable person. The ladies flattered him with their
+most amiable smiles, hoping that the fashionable artist would honor them
+with a portrait gratis, as he had done with the duchess.
+
+In this period of high-life, always in dress clothes from seven in the
+evening, without painting anything but women who wanted to appear pretty
+and discussed gravely with the artist which gown they should put on to
+serve as a model, Renovales met his wife Josephina.
+
+The first time that he saw her among so many ladies of arrogant bearing
+and striking presence, he felt attracted towards her by force of
+contrast. The bashfulness, the modesty, the insignificance of the girl
+impressed him. She was small, her face offered no other beauty than that
+of youth, her body had the charm of delicacy. Like himself, the poor
+girl was there out of a sort of condescendence on the part of the
+others; she seemed to be there by sufferance and she shrank in it, as if
+afraid of attracting attention, Renovales always saw her in the same
+evening gown somewhat old, with that appearance of weariness which a
+garment constantly made over to follow the course of the fashions is
+wont to acquire. The gloves, the flowers, the ribbons had a sort of
+sadness in their freshness, as if they betrayed the sacrifices, the
+domestic exertions it had taken to procure them. She was on intimate
+terms with all the girls who made a triumphal entrance into the
+drawing-rooms, inspiring praise and envy with their new toilettes; her
+mother, a majestic lady, with a big nose and gold glasses, treated the
+ladies of the noblest families with familiarity; but in spite of this
+intimacy there was apparent around the mother and daughter the gap of
+somewhat disdainful affection, in which commiseration bore no small
+part. They were poor. The father had been a diplomat of some distinction
+who, at his death, left his wife no other source of income than the
+widow's pension. Two sons were abroad as attachés of an embassy,
+struggling with the scantiness of their salary and the demands of their
+position. The mother and daughter lived in Madrid, chained to the
+society in which they were born, fearing to abandon it, as if that would
+be equivalent to a degradation, remaining during the day in a
+fourth-floor apartment, furnished with the remnants of their past
+opulence, making unheard-of sacrifices in order to be able in the
+evening to rub elbows worthily with those who had been their equals.
+
+Some relative of Doña Emilia, the mother, contributed to her support,
+not with money (never that!) but by loaning her the surplus of their
+luxury, that she and her daughter might maintain a pale appearance of
+comfort.
+
+Some of them loaned them their carriage on certain days, so that they
+might drive through the Castellana and the Retiro, bowing to their
+friends as the carriages passed; others sent them their box at the Opera
+on evenings when the bill was not a brilliant one. Their pity made them
+remember them, too, when they sent out invitations to birthday dinners,
+afternoon teas, and the like. "We mustn't forget the Torrealtas, poor
+things." And the next day, the society reporters included in the list of
+those present at the function "the charming Señorita de Torrealta and
+her distinguished mother, the widow of the famous diplomat of
+imperishable memory," and Doña Emilia, forgetting her situation,
+fancying she was in the good old times, went to everything, in the same
+black gown, annoying with her "my dears" and her gossip the great ladies
+whose maids were richer and ate better than she and her daughter. If
+some old gentleman took refuge beside her, the diplomat's wife tried to
+overwhelm him with the majesty of her recollections. "When we were
+ambassadors in Stockholm." "When my friend Eugénie was empress...."
+
+The daughter, endowed with her instinctive girlish timidity, seemed
+better to realize her position. She would remain seated among the older
+ladies, only rarely venturing to join the other girls who had been her
+boarding-school companions and who now treated her condescendingly,
+looking on her as they would upon a governess who had been raised to
+their station, out of remembrance for the past. Her mother was annoyed
+at her timidity. She ought to dance a lot, be lively and bold, like the
+other girls, crack jokes, even if they were doubtful, that the men might
+repeat them and give her the reputation of being a wit. It was
+incredible that with the bringing up she had had, she should be so
+insignificant. The idea! The daughter of a great man about whom people
+used to crowd as soon as he entered the first salons in Europe! A girl
+who had been educated at the school of the Sacred Heart in Paris, who
+spoke English, a little German, and spent the day reading when she did
+not have to clean a pair of gloves or make over a dress! Didn't she want
+to get married? Was she so well satisfied with that fourth-story
+apartment, that wretched cell so unworthy of their name?
+
+Josephina smiled sadly. Get married! She never would get to that in the
+society they frequented. Everyone knew they were poor. The young men
+thronged the drawing-rooms in search of women with money. If by chance
+one of them did come up to her, attracted by her pale beauty, it was
+only to whisper to her shameful suggestions while they danced; to
+propose uncompromising engagements, friendly relations with a prudence
+modeled on the English, flirtations that had no result.
+
+Renovales did not realize how his friendship with Josephina began.
+Perhaps it was the contrast between himself and the little woman who
+hardly came up to his shoulder and who seemed about fifteen when she was
+already past twenty. Her soft voice with its slight lisp came to his
+ears like a caress. He laughed when he thought of the possibility of
+embracing that graceful, slender form; it would break in pieces in his
+pugilist's hands, like a wax doll. Mariano sought her out in the
+drawing-rooms which she and her mother were accustomed to frequent, and
+spent all the time sitting at her side, feeling an impulse to confide in
+her as a brother, a desire of telling her all about herself, his past,
+his present work, his hopes, as if she were a room-mate. She listened to
+him, looking at him with her brown eyes that seemed to smile at him,
+nodding assent, often without having heard what he said, receiving like
+a caress the exuberance of that nature which seemed to overflow in
+waves of fire. He was different from all the men she had known.
+
+When someone--nobody knows who--perhaps one of Josephina's friends,
+noticed this intimacy, to make sport of her, she spread the news. The
+painter and the Torrealta girl were engaged. That was when the
+interested parties discovered that they loved each other. It was
+something more than friendship that made Renovales pass through
+Josephina's street mornings, looking at the high windows in the hope of
+seeing her dainty silhouette through the panes. One night at the
+duchess' when they were left alone in the hallway, Renovales caught her
+hand and lifted it to his lips, but so timidly that they scarcely
+touched her glove. He was afraid after his rudeness, felt ashamed of his
+violence; he thought he was hurting the delicate, slender girl; but she
+let her hand stay in his, and at the same time bowed her head and began
+to cry.
+
+"How good you are, Mariano!"
+
+She felt the most intense gratitude, when she realized that she was
+loved for the first time; loved truly, by a man of some distinction, who
+fled from the women of fortune to seek a humble, neglected girl like
+her. All the treasures of affection which had been accumulating in the
+isolation of her humiliating life overflowed. How she could love the man
+who loved her, taking her out of that parasite's existence, lifting her
+by his strength and affection to the level of those who scorned her!
+
+The noble widow of Torrealta gave a cry of indignation when she learned
+of the engagement of the painter and her daughter. "The blacksmith's
+son!" "The illustrious diplomat of imperishable memory!" But as if this
+protest of her pride opened her eyes, she thought of the years her
+daughter had spent going from one drawing-room to another, without
+anyone paying any attention to her. What dunces men were! She thought,
+too, that a celebrated painter was a personage; she remembered the
+articles devoted to Renovales because of his last picture, and, above
+all, a thing that had the most effect on her, she knew by hearsay of the
+great fortune that artists amassed abroad, the hundreds of thousands of
+francs paid for a canvas that could be carried under your arm. Why might
+not Renovales be one of the fortunate?
+
+She began to annoy her countless relatives with requests for advice. The
+girl had no father and they must take his place. Some answered
+indifferently. "The painter! Hump! Not bad!" evidencing by their
+coldness that it was all the same to them if she married a
+tax-collector. Others insulted her unwittingly by showing their
+approval. "Renovales? An artist with a great future before him. What
+more do you want? You ought to be thankful he has taken a fancy to her."
+But the advice that decided her was that of her famous cousin, the
+Marquis of Tarfe, a man to whom she looked upon as the most
+distinguished citizen in the country, without doubt because of his
+office as permanent head of the Foreign Service, for every two years he
+was made Minister of Foreign Affairs.
+
+"It looks very good to me," said the nobleman, hastily, for they were
+waiting for him in the Senate. "It is a modern marriage and we must keep
+up with the times. I am a conservative, but liberal, very liberal and
+very modern. I will protect the children. I like the marriage. Art
+joining its prestige with a historic family! The popular blood that
+rises through its merits and is mingled with that of the ancient
+nobility!"
+
+And the Marquis of Tarfe, whose marquisate did not go back half a
+century, with these rhetorical figures of an orator in the Senate and
+his promises of protection, convinced the haughty widow. She was the one
+who spoke to Renovales, to relieve him of an explanation that would be
+trying because of the timidity he felt in this society that was not his
+own.
+
+"I know all about it, Mariano, my dear, and you have my consent."
+
+But she did not like long engagements. When did he intend to get
+married? Renovales was more eager for it than the mother. Josephina was
+different from other women who hardly aroused his desire. His chastity,
+which had been like that of a rough laborer, developed into a feverish
+desire to make that charming doll his own as soon as possible. Besides,
+his pride was flattered by this union. His fiancée was poor; her only
+dowry was a few ragged clothes, but she belonged to a noble family,
+ministers, generals--all of noble descent. They could weigh by the ton
+the coronets and coats-of-arms of those countless relatives who did not
+pay much attention to Josephina and her mother, but who would soon be
+his family. What would Señor Antón think, hammering iron in the suburbs
+of his town? What would his comrades in Rome say, whose lot consisted in
+living with the _ciociari_ who served as their models, and marrying them
+afterward out of fear for the stiletto of the venerable Calabrian who
+insisted on providing a legitimate father for his grandsons!
+
+The papers had much to say about the wedding, repeating with slight
+variations the very phrases of the Marquis of Tarfe, "Art uniting with
+nobility." Renovales wanted to leave for Rome with Josephina as soon as
+the marriage was celebrated. He had made all the arrangements for his
+new life there, investing in it all the money he had received from the
+State for his picture and the product of several pictures for the Senate
+for which he received commissions through his illustrious
+relative-to-be.
+
+A friend in Rome (the jolly Cotoner) had hired for him an apartment in
+the Via Margutta and had furnished it in accordance with his artistic
+taste. Doña Emilia would remain in Madrid with one of her sons, who had
+been promoted to a position in the Foreign Office. Everybody, even the
+mother, was in the young couple's way. And Doña Emilia wiped away an
+invisible tear with the tip of her glove. Besides, she did not care to
+go back to the countries where she had been _somebody_; she preferred to
+stay in Madrid; there people knew her at least.
+
+The wedding was an event. Not a soul in the huge family was absent; all
+feared the annoying questions of the illustrious widow who kept a list
+of relatives to the sixth remove.
+
+Señor Antón arrived two days before, in a new suit with knee-breeches
+and a broad plush hat, looking somewhat confused at the smiles of those
+people who regarded him as a quaint type. Crestfallen and trembling in
+the presence of the two women, with a countryman's respect, he called
+his daughter-in-law "Señorita."
+
+"No, papa, call me 'daughter.' Say Josephina to me."
+
+But in spite of Josephina's simplicity and the tender gratitude he felt
+when he saw her look at his son with such loving eyes, he did not
+venture to take the liberty of speaking to her as his child and made the
+greatest efforts to avoid this danger, always speaking to her in the
+third person.
+
+Doña Emilia, with her gold glasses and her majestic bearing, caused him
+even greater emotion. He always called her "Señora marquesa," for in his
+simplicity he could not admit that that lady was not at least a
+marchioness. The widow, somewhat disarmed by the good man's homage,
+admitted that he was a "rube" of some natural talent, a fact that made
+her tolerate the ridiculous note of his knee breeches.
+
+In the chapel of the Marquis of Tarfe's palace, after looking
+dumbfounded at the great throng of nobility that had gathered for his
+son's wedding, the old man, standing in the doorway, began to cry:
+
+"Now I can die, O Lord. Now I can die!"
+
+And he repeated his sad desire, without noticing the laughter of the
+servants, as if, after a life of toil, happiness were the inevitable
+forerunner of death.
+
+The bride and groom started on their trip the same day. Señor Antón for
+the first time kissed his daughter-in-law on the forehead, moistening it
+with his tears, and went home to his village, still repeating his
+longing for death, as though nothing were left in the world for him to
+hope for.
+
+Renovales and his wife reached Rome after several stops on the way.
+Their short stay in various cities of the Riviera, the days in Pisa and
+Florence, though delightful, as keeping the memory of their first
+intimacy, seemed unspeakably vulgar, when they were installed in their
+little house in Rome. There the real honeymoon began, by their own
+fireside, free from all intrusion, far from the confusion of hotels.
+
+Josephina, accustomed to a life of secret privation, to the misery of
+that fourth-floor apartment in which she and her mother lived as though
+they were camping out, keeping all their show for the street, admired
+the coquettish charm, the smart daintiness of the house in the Via
+Margutta. Mariano's friend, who had charge of the furnishing of the
+house, a certain Pepe Cotoner, who hardly ever touched his brushes and
+who devoted all his artistic enthusiasm to his worship of Renovales, had
+certainly done things well.
+
+Josephina clapped her hands in childish joy when she saw the bedroom,
+admiring its sumptuous Venetian furniture, with its wonderful inlaid
+pearl and ebony, a princely luxury that the painter would have to pay
+for in instalments.
+
+Oh! The first night of their stay in Rome! How well Renovales remembered
+it! Josephina, lying on the monumental bed, made for the wife of a Doge,
+shook with the delight of rest, stretching her limbs before she hid them
+under the fine sheets, showing herself with the abandon of a woman who
+no longer has any secrets to keep. The pink toes of her plump little
+feet moved as if they were calling Renovales.
+
+Standing beside the bed, he looked at her seriously, with his brows
+contracted, dominated by a desire that he hesitated to express. He
+wanted to see her, to admire her; he did not know her yet, after those
+nights in the hotels when they could hear strange voices on the other
+side of the thin walls.
+
+It was not the caprice of a lover, it was the desire of a painter, the
+demand of an artist. His eyes were hungry for beauty.
+
+She resisted, blushing, a trifle angry at this demand which offended her
+deepest prejudices.
+
+"Don't be foolish, Mariano, dear. Come to bed; don't talk nonsense."
+
+But he persisted obstinately in his desire. She must overcome her
+bourgeois scruples, art scoffed at such modesty, human beauty was meant
+to be shown in all its radiant majesty and not to be kept hidden,
+despised and cursed.
+
+He did not want to paint her; he did not dare to ask for that; but he
+did want to see her, to see her and admire her, not with a coarse
+desire, but with religious adoration.
+
+And his hands, restrained by the fears of hurting her, gently pulled her
+weak arms that were crossed on her breast in the endeavor to resist his
+advances. She laughed: "You silly thing. You're tickling me--you're
+hurting me." But little by little, conquered by his persistency, her
+feminine pride flattered by this worship of her body, she gave in to
+him, allowed herself to be treated like a child, with soft remonstrances
+as if she were undergoing torture, but without resisting any longer.
+
+Her body, free from veils, shone with the whiteness of pearl. Josephina
+closed her eyes as if she wanted to flee from the shame of her
+nakedness. On the smooth sheet, her graceful form was outlined in a
+slightly rosy tone, intoxicating the eyes of the artist.
+
+Josephina's face was not much to look at, but her body! If he could only
+overcome her scruples some time and paint her!
+
+Renovales kneeled down beside the bed in a transport of admiration.
+
+"I worship you, Josephina. You are as fair as Venus. No, not Venus. She
+is cold and calm, like a goddess, and you are a woman. You are
+like--what are you like? Yes, now I see the likeness. You are Goya's
+little _Maja_, with her delicate grace, her fascinating daintiness. You
+are the _Maja Desnuda!_"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Renovales' life was changed. In love with his wife, fearing that she
+might lack some comfort, and thinking with anxiety of the Torrealta
+widow, who might complain that the daughter of the "illustrious diplomat
+of imperishable memory" was not happy because she had lowered herself to
+the extent of marrying a painter, he worked incessantly to maintain with
+his brush the comforts with which he had surrounded Josephina.
+
+He, who had had so much scorn for industrial art, painting for money, as
+did his comrades, followed their example, but with the energy that he
+showed in all his undertakings. In some of the studios there were cries
+of protest against this tireless competitor who lowered prices
+scandalously. He had sold his brush for a year to one of those Jewish
+dealers who exported paintings at so much a picture, and under agreement
+not to paint for any other dealer. Renovales worked from morning till
+night changing subjects when it was demanded by what he called his
+_impresario_. "Enough _ciociari_, now for some Moors." Afterwards the
+Moors lost their market-value and the turn of the musketeers came,
+fencing a valiant duel; then pink shepherdesses in the style of Watteau
+or ladies in powdered wigs embarking in a golden gondola to the sound of
+lutes. To give freshness to his stock, he would interpolate a sacristy
+scene with much show of embroidered chasubles and golden incensaries, or
+an occasional bacchanalian, imitating from memory, without models,
+Titians' voluptuous forms and amber flesh. When the list was ended, the
+_ciociari_ were once more in style and could be begun again. The
+painter with his extraordinary facility of execution produced two or
+three pictures a week, and the _impresario_, to encourage him in his
+work, often visited him afternoons, following the movements of his brush
+with the enthusiasm of a man who appreciated art at so much a foot and
+so much an hour. The news he brought was of a sort to infuse new zest.
+
+The last bacchanal painted by Renovales was in a fashionable bar in New
+York. His pageant of the Abruzzi was in one of the noblest castles in
+Russia. Another picture, representing a dance of countesses disguised as
+shepherdesses in a field of violets, was in the possession of a Jewish
+baron, a banker in Frankfort. The dealer rubbed his hands, as he spoke
+to the painter with a patronizing air. His name was becoming famous,
+thanks to him, and he would not step until he had won him a world-wide
+reputation. Already his agents were asking him to send nothing but the
+works of Signor Renovales, for they were the best sellers. But Mariano
+answered him with a sudden outburst of bitterness. All those canvases
+were mere rot. If that was art, he would prefer to break stone on the
+high roads.
+
+But his rebellion against this debasement of his art disappeared when he
+saw his Josephina in the house whose ornamentation he was constantly
+improving, converting it into a jewel case worthy of his love. She was
+happy in her home, with a splendid carriage in which to drive every
+afternoon and perfect freedom to spend money on her clothes and jewelry.
+Renovales' wife lacked nothing; she had-at her disposal, as adviser and
+errand-boy, Cotoner, who spent the night in a garret that served him as
+a studio in one of the cheap districts and the rest of the day with the
+young couple. She was mistress of the money; she had never seen so many
+banknotes at once. When Renovales handed her the pile of lires which
+the impresario gave him she said with a little laugh of joy, "Money,
+money!" and ran and hid it away with the serious expression of a
+diligent, economical housewife--only to take it out the next day and
+squander it with a childish carelessness. What a wonderful thing
+painting was! Her illustrious father (in spite of all that her mother
+said) had never made so much money in all his travels through the world,
+going from cotillon to cotillon as the representative of his king.
+
+While Renovales was in the studio, she had been to drive in the Pincio,
+bowing from her landau to the countless wives of ambassadors who were
+stationed at Rome, to aristocratic travelers stopping in the city, to
+whom she had been introduced in some drawing-room, and to all the crowd
+of diplomatic attachés who live about the double court of the Vatican
+and the Quirinal.
+
+The painter was introduced by his wife into an official society of the
+most rigid formality. The niece of the Marquis of Tarfe, perpetual
+foreign minister, was received with open arms by the high society of
+Rome, the most exclusive in Europe. At every reception at the two
+Spanish embassies, "the famous painter Renovales and his charming wife"
+were present and these invitations had spread to the embassies of other
+countries. Almost every night there was some function. Since there were
+two diplomatic centers, one at the court of the Italian king, the other
+at the Vatican, the receptions and evening parties were frequent in this
+isolated society that gathered every night, sufficient for its own
+enjoyment.
+
+When Renovales got home at dark, tired out with his work, he would find
+Josephina, already half dressed, waiting for him, and Cotoner helped him
+to put on his evening clothes.
+
+"The cross!" exclaimed Josephina, when she saw him with his dress-coat
+on. "Why, man alive, how did you happen to forget your cross? You know
+that they all wear something there."
+
+Cotoner went for the insignia, a great cross the Spanish government had
+given him for his picture, and the artist, with the ribbon across his
+shirt-front and a brilliant circle on his coat, started out with his
+wife to spend the evening among diplomats, distinguished travelers and
+cardinals' nephews.
+
+The other painters were furious with envy when they learned how often
+the Spanish ambassador and his wife, the consul and prominent people
+connected with the Vatican visited his studio. They denied his talent,
+attributing these distinctions to Josephina's position. They called him
+a courtier and a flatterer, alleging that he had married to better his
+position. One of his most constant visitors was Father Recovero, the
+representative of a monastic order that was powerful in Spain, a sort of
+cowled ambassador who enjoyed great influence with the Pope. When he was
+not in Renovales' studio, the latter was sure that he was at his house,
+doing some favor for Josephina who felt proud of her friendship with
+this influential friar, so jovial and scrupulously correct in spite of
+his coarse clothes. Renovales' wife always had some favor to ask of him,
+her friends in Madrid were unceasing in their requests.
+
+The Torrealta widow contributed to this by her constant chatter among
+her acquaintances about the high position her daughter occupied in Rome.
+According to her, Mariano was making millions; Josephina was reported to
+be a great friend of the Pope, her house was full of Cardinals and if
+the Pope did not visit her it was only because the poor thing was a
+prisoner in the Vatican. And so the painter's wife had to keep sending
+to Madrid some rosary that had been passed over St. Peter's tomb or
+reliques taken from the Catacombs. She urged Father Recovero to
+negotiate difficult marriage dispensations and interested herself in
+behalf of the petitions of pious ladies, friends of her mother. The
+great festivals of the Roman Church filled her with enthusiasm because
+of their theatrical interest and she was very grateful to the generous
+friar who never forgot to reserve her a good place. There never was a
+reception of pilgrims in Saint Peter's with a triumphal march of the
+Pope carried on a platform amid feather fans, at which Josephina was not
+present. At other times the good Father made the mysterious announcement
+that on the next day Pallestri, the famous male soprano of the papal
+chapel, was going to sing; the Spanish lady got up early, leaving her
+husband still in bed, to hear the sweet voice of the pontifical eunuch
+whose beardless face appeared in shop windows among the portraits of
+dancers and fashionable tenors.
+
+Renovales laughed good-naturedly at the countless occupations and futile
+entertainments of his wife. Poor girl, she must enjoy herself; that was
+what he was working for. He was sorry enough that he could go with her
+only in her evening diversions. During the day he entrusted her to his
+faithful Cotoner who attended her like an old family servant, carrying
+her bundles when she went shopping, performing the duties of butler and
+sometimes of chef.
+
+Renovales had made his acquaintance when he came to Rome. He was his
+best friend. Ten years his senior, Cotoner showed the worship of a pupil
+and the affections of an older brother for the young artist. Everyone in
+Rome knew him, laughing at his pictures on the rare occasions when he
+painted, and appreciated his accommodating nature that to some extent
+dignified his parasite's existence. Short, rotund, bald-headed, with
+projecting ears and the ugliness of a good-natured, merry satyr, Signor
+Cotoner, when summer came, always found refuge in the castle of some
+cardinal in the Roman Campagna. During the winter he was a familiar
+sight in the Corso, wrapped in his greenish mackintosh, the sleeves of
+which waved like a bat's wings. He had begun in his own province as a
+landscape painter but he wanted to paint figures, to equal the masters,
+and so he landed in Rome in the company of the bishop of his diocese who
+looked on him as an honor to the church. He never moved from the city.
+His progress was remarkable. He knew the names and histories of all the
+artists, no one could compare with him in his ability to live
+economically in Rome and to find where things were cheapest. If a
+Spaniard went through the great city, he never missed visiting him. The
+children of celebrated painters looked on him as a sort of nurse, for he
+had put them all to sleep in his arms. The great triumph of his life was
+having figured in the cavalcade of the Quixote as Sancho Panza. He
+always painted the same picture, portraits of the Pope in three
+different sizes, piling them up in the attic that served him for a
+studio and bedroom. His friends, the cardinals whom he visited
+frequently, took pity on "Poor Signor Cotoner" and for a few lire bought
+a picture of the Pontiff horribly ugly, to present it to some village
+church where it would arouse great admiration since it came from Rome
+and was by a painter who was a friend of His Eminence.
+
+These purchases were a ray of joy for Cotoner, who came to Renovales'
+studio with his head up and wearing a smile of affected modesty.
+
+"I have made a sale, my boy. A pope; a large one, two meter size."
+
+And with a sudden burst of confidence in his talent, he talked of the
+future. Other men desired medals, triumphs in the exhibitions; he was
+more modest. He would be satisfied if he could guess who would be Pope
+when the present Pope died, in order to be able to paint up pictures of
+him by the dozen ahead of time. What a triumph to put the goods on the
+market the day after the Conclave! A perfect fortune! And well
+acquainted with all the cardinals, he passed the Sacred College in
+mental review with the persistency of a gambler in a lottery, hesitating
+between the half dozen who aspired to the tiara. He lived like a
+parasite among the high functionaries of the Church, but he was
+indifferent to religion, as if this association with them had taken away
+all his belief. The old man clad in white and the other red gentlemen
+inspired respect in him because they were rich and served indirectly his
+wretched portrait business. His admiration was wholly devoted to
+Renovales. In the studio of other artists he received their irritating
+jests with his usual calm smile of affability, but they could not speak
+ill of Renovales nor discuss his ability. To his mind, Renovales could
+produce nothing but masterpieces and in his blind admiration he even
+went so far as to rave naively over the easel pictures he painted for
+his impresario.
+
+Sometimes Josephina unexpectedly appeared in her husband's studio and
+chatted with him while he painted, praising the canvases that had a
+pretty subject. She preferred to find him alone in these visits,
+painting from his fancy without any other model than some clothes placed
+on a manikin. She felt a sort of aversion to models, and Renovales tried
+in vain to convince her of the necessity of using them. He had talent to
+paint beautiful things without resorting to the assistance of those
+ordinary old men and above all, of those women with their disheveled
+hair, their flashing eyes and their wolfish teeth, who, in the solitude
+and silence of the studio, actually terrified her. Renovales laughed.
+What nonsense! Jealous little girl! As if he were capable of thinking of
+anything but art with a palette in his hand!
+
+One afternoon, when Josephina suddenly came into the studio she saw on
+the model's platform a naked woman, lying in some furs, showing the
+curves of her yellow back. The wife compressed her lips and pretended
+not to see her, listened to Renovales with a distracted air, as he
+explained this innovation. He was painting a bacchanal and it was
+impossible for him to proceed without a model. It was a case of
+necessity, flesh could not be done from memory. The model, at ease
+before the painter, felt ashamed of her nakedness in the presence of
+that fashionable lady, and after wrapping herself up in the furs, hid
+behind a screen and hastily dressed herself.
+
+Renovales recovered his serenity when he reached home, seeing that his
+wife received him with her customary eagerness, as if she had forgotten
+her displeasure of the afternoon. She laughed at Cotoner's stories;
+after dinner they went to the theater and when bedtime came, the painter
+had forgotten about the surprise in the studio. He was falling asleep
+when he was alarmed by a painful, prolonged sigh, as if some one were
+stifling beside him. When he lit the light he saw Josephina with both
+fists in her eyes, crying, her breast heaving with sobs, and kicking in
+a childish fit of temper till the bed-clothes were rolled in a ball and
+the exquisite puff fell to the floor.
+
+"I won't, I won't," she moaned with an accent of protest.
+
+The painter had jumped out of bed, full of anxiety, going from one side
+to the other without knowing what to do, trying to pull her hands away
+from her eyes, giving in, in spite of his strength, to Josephina's
+efforts to free herself from him.
+
+"But what's the matter? What is it you won't do? What's happened to
+you?"
+
+And she continued to cry, tossing about in the bed, kicking in a nervous
+fury.
+
+"Let me alone! I don't like you; don't touch me. I won't let you, no,
+sir, I won't let you. I'm going away. I'm going home to my mother."
+
+Renovales, terrified at the fury of the little woman who was always so
+gentle, did not know what to do to calm her. He ran through the bedroom
+and the adjoining dressing room in his night shirt, that showed his
+athletic muscles; he offered her water, going so far as to pick up the
+bottles of perfumes in his confusion as if they could serve him as
+sedatives, and finally he knelt down, trying to kiss the clenched little
+hands that thrust him away, catching at his hair and beard.
+
+"Let me alone. I tell you to let me alone. I know you don't love me. I'm
+going away."
+
+The painter was surprised and afraid of the nervousness in this beloved
+little doll; he did not dare to touch her for fear of hurting her. As
+soon as the sun rose she would leave that house forever. Her husband did
+not love her. No one but her mother cared for her. He was making her a
+laughing stock before people. And all these incoherent complaints that
+did not explain the motive for her anger, continued for a long time
+until the artist guessed the cause. Was it the model, the naked woman?
+Yes, that was it; she would not consent to it, that in a studio that was
+practically her house, low women should show themselves immodestly to
+her husband's eyes. And as she protested against such abominations, her
+twitching fingers tore the front of her night dress, showing the hidden
+charms that filled Renovales with such enthusiasm.
+
+The painter, tired out by this scene, enervated by the cries and tears
+of his wife, could not help laughing when he discovered the motive of
+her irritation.
+
+"Ah! So it's all on account of the model. Be quiet, girl, no woman shall
+come into the studio."
+
+And he promised everything Josephina wished, in order to be over with it
+as soon as possible. When it was dark once more, she was still sighing,
+but now it was in her husband's strong arms with her head resting on his
+breast, lisping like a grieved child that tries to justify the past fit
+of temper. It did not cost Mariano anything to do her this favor. She
+loved him dearly, so dearly, and she would love him still more if he
+respected her prejudices. He might call her bourgeois, a common ordinary
+soul, but that was what she wanted to be, just as she always had been.
+Besides, what was the need of painting naked women? Couldn't he do other
+things? She urged him to paint children in smocks and sandals, curly
+haired and chubby, like the child Jesus; old peasant women with
+wrinkled, copper-colored faces, bald-headed ancients with long beards;
+character studies, but no young women, understand? No naked beauties!
+Renovales said "yes" to everything, drawing close to him that beloved
+form still trembling with its past rage. They clung to each other with a
+sort of anxiety, desirous of forgetting what had happened, and the night
+ended peacefully for Renovales in the happiness of reconciliation.
+
+When summer came they rented a little villa at Castel-Gandolfo. Cotoner
+had gone to Rivoli in the train of a cardinal and the married couple
+lived in the country accompanied only by a couple of maids and a
+manservant, who took care of Renovales' painting kit.
+
+Josephina was perfectly contented in this retirement, far from Rome,
+talking with her husband at all hours, free from the anxiety that filled
+her, when he was working in his studio. For a month Renovales remained
+in placid idleness. His art seemed forgotten; the boxes of paints, the
+easels, all the artistic luggage brought from Rome, remained packed up
+and forgotten in a shed in the garden. Afternoons they took long walks,
+returning home at nightfall slowly, with their arms around each other's
+waists, watching the strip of pale gold in the western sky, breaking the
+rural silence with one of the sweet, passionate romances that came from
+Naples. Now that they were alone in the intimacy of a life without cares
+or friendships, the enthusiastic love of the first days of their married
+life reawakened. But the "demon of painting" was not long in spreading
+over him his invisible wings, which seemed to scatter an irresistible
+enchantment. He became bored at the long hours in the bright sun, yawned
+in his wicker chair, smoking pipe after pipe, not knowing what to talk
+about. Josephina, on her part, tried to drive away the ennui by reading
+some English novel of aristocratic life, tiresome and moral, to which
+she had taken a great liking in her school girl days.
+
+Renovales began to work again. His servant brought out his artist's kit
+and he took up his palette as enthusiastically as a beginner, and
+painted for himself with a religious fervor as if he thought to purify
+himself from that base submission to the commissions of a dealer.
+
+He studied Nature directly; painted delightful bits of landscapes,
+tanned and repulsive heads that breathed the selfish brutality of the
+peasant. But this artistic activity did not seem to satisfy him. His
+life of increased intimacy with Josephina aroused in him mysterious
+longings that he hardly dared to formulate. Mornings when his wife,
+fresh and rosy from her bath, appeared before him almost naked, he
+looked at her with greedy eyes.
+
+"Oh, if you were only willing! If you didn't have that foolish prejudice
+of yours!"
+
+And his exclamations made her smile, for her feminine vanity was
+flattered by this worship. Renovales regretted that his artistic talent
+had to go in search of beautiful things when the supreme, definitive
+work was at his side. He told her about Rubens, the great master, who
+surrounded Elène Froment with the luxury of a princess, and of her who
+felt no objection to freeing her fresh, mythological beauty from veils
+in order to serve as a model for her husband. Renovales praised the
+Flemish woman. Artists formed a family by themselves; morality and the
+popular prejudices were meant for other people. They lived under the
+jurisdiction of Beauty, regarding as natural what other people looked on
+as a sin.
+
+Josephina protested against her husband's wishes with a playful
+indignation but she allowed him to admire her. Her abandon increased
+every day. Mornings, when she got up, she remained undressed longer,
+prolonging her toilette while the artist walked around her, praising her
+various beauties. "That is Rubens, pure and simple, that's Titian's
+color. Look, little girl, lift up your arms, like this. Oh, you are the
+_Maja_, Goya's little _Maja_." And she submitted to him with a gracious
+pout, as if she relished the expression of worship and disappointment
+which her husband wore at possessing her as a woman and not possessing
+her as a model.
+
+One afternoon when a scorching wind seemed to stifle the countryside
+with its breath, Josephina capitulated. They were in their room, with
+the windows closed, trying to escape the terrible sirocco by shutting
+it out and putting on thin clothes. She did not want to see her husband
+with such a gloomy face nor listen to his complaints. As long as he was
+crazy and was set on his whim, she did not dare to oppose him. He could
+paint her; but only a study, not a picture. When he was tired of
+reproducing her flesh on the canvas they would destroy it,--just as if
+he had done nothing.
+
+The painter said "yes" to everything, eager to have his brush in hand as
+soon as possible, before the beauty he craved. For three days he worked
+with a mad fever, with his eyes unnaturally wide open, as if he meant to
+devour the graceful outlines with his sight. Josephina, accustomed now
+to being naked, posed with unconscious abandon, with that feminine
+shamelessness which hesitates only at the first step. Oppressed by the
+heat, she slept while her husband kept on painting.
+
+When the work was finished, Josephina could not help admiring it. "How
+clever you are! But am I really like that, so pretty?" Mariano showed
+his satisfaction. It was his masterpiece, his best. Perhaps in all his
+life he might never find another moment like that, of prodigious mental
+intensity, what people commonly call inspiration. She continued to
+admire herself in the canvas, just as she did some mornings in the great
+mirror in the bedroom. She praised the various parts of her beauty with
+frank immodesty. Dazzled by the beauty of her body she did not notice
+the face, that seemed unimportant, lost in soft veils. When her eyes
+fell on it she showed a sort of disappointment.
+
+"It doesn't look much like me! It isn't my face!"
+
+The artist smiled. It was not she; he had tried to disguise her face,
+nothing but her face. It was a mask, a concession to social conventions.
+As it was, no one would recognize her and his work, his great work,
+might appear and receive the admiration of the world.
+
+"Because, we aren't going to destroy it," Renovales continued with a
+tremble in his voice, "that would be a crime. Never in my life will I be
+able to do anything like it again. We won't destroy it, will we, little
+girl?"
+
+The little girl remained silent for a good while with her gaze fixed on
+the picture. Renovales' eager eyes saw a cloud slowly rise over her
+face, like a shadow on a white wall. The painter felt as though the
+floor were sinking under his feet; the storm was coming. Josephina
+turned pale, two tears slipped slowly down her cheeks, two others took
+their places to fall with them and then more and more.
+
+"I won't! I won't!"
+
+It was the same hoarse, nervous, despotic cry that had set his hair on
+end with anxiety and fear that night in Rome. The little woman looked
+with hatred at the naked body that radiated its pearly light from the
+depths of the canvas. She seemed to feel the terror of a sleep-walker
+who suddenly awakens in the midst of a square surrounded by a thousand
+curious, eager eyes and in her fright does not know what to do nor where
+to flee. How could she have assented to such a disgraceful thing?
+
+"I won't have it!" she cried angrily. "Destroy it, Mariano, destroy it."
+
+But Mariano seemed on the point of weeping too. Destroy it! Who could
+demand such a foolish thing? That figure was not she; no one would
+recognize her. What was the use of depriving him of a signal triumph?
+But his wife did not listen to him. She was rolling on the floor with
+the same convulsions and moans as on the night of the stormy scene, her
+hands were clenched like a crook, her feet kicked like a dying lamb's
+and her mouth, painfully distorted, kept crying hoarsely:
+
+"I won't have it! I won't have it! Destroy it!"
+
+She complained of her lot with a violence that wounded Renovales. She, a
+respectable woman, submitted to that degradation as if she were a street
+walker. If she had only known! How was she going to imagine that her
+husband would make such abominable proposals to her!
+
+Renovales, offended at these insults, at these lashes which her shrill,
+piercing voice dealt his artistic talent, left his wife, let her roll on
+the floor and with clenched fists, went from one end of the room to the
+other, looking at the ceiling, muttering all the oaths, Spanish and
+Italian, that were in current use in his studio.
+
+Suddenly he stood still, rooted to the floor by terror and surprise.
+Josephina, still naked, had jumped on the picture with the quickness of
+a wild cat. With the first stroke of her finger nails, she scratched the
+canvas from top to bottom, mingling the colors that were still soft,
+tearing off the thin shell of the dry parts. Then she caught up the
+little knife from the paint box and--rip! the canvas gave a long moan,
+parted under the thrust of that white arm which seemed to have a bluish
+cast in the violence of her wrath.
+
+He did not move. For a moment he felt indignant, tempted to throw
+himself on her but he lapsed into a childish weakness, ready to cry, to
+take refuge in a corner, to hide his weak, aching head. She, blind with
+wrath, continued to vent her fury on the picture, tangling her feet in
+the wood of the frame, tearing off pieces of canvas, walking back and
+forth with her prey like a wild beast. The artist had leaned his head
+against the wall, his strong breast shook with cowardly sobs.
+
+To the almost fatherly grief at the loss of his work was added the
+bitterness of disappointment. For the first time he foresaw what his
+life was going to be. What a mistake he had made in marrying that girl
+who admired his art as a profession, as a means of making money, and who
+was trying to mold him to the prejudices and scruples of the circle in
+which she was born! He loved her in spite of this and he was certain
+that she did not love him less, but, still, perhaps it would have been
+better to remain alone, free for his art and, in case a companion was
+necessary, to find a fair maid of all work with all the splendor and
+intellectual humility of a beautiful animal that would admire and obey
+her master blindly.
+
+Three days passed in which the painter and his wife hardly spoke to each
+other. They looked at each other askance, humbled and broken by this
+domestic trouble. But the solitude in which they lived, the necessity of
+remaining together made the reconciliation imperative. She was the first
+to speak, as if she were terrified by the sadness and dejection of that
+huge giant who wandered about as peevish as a sick man. She threw her
+arms around him, kissed his forehead, made a thousand gracious efforts
+to bring a faint smile to his face. "Who loved him? His Josephina. His
+_Maja_ but not his _Maja Desnuda;_ that was over forever. He must never
+think of those horrible things. A decent painter does not think of them.
+What would all her friends say? There were many pretty things to paint
+in the world. They must live in each other's love, without his
+displeasing her with his hateful whims. His affection for the nude was a
+shameful remnant of his Bohemian days."
+
+And Renovales, won over by his wife's petting, made peace,--tried to
+forget his work and smiled with the resignation of a slave who loves
+his chain because it assures him peace and life.
+
+They returned to Rome at the beginning of the fall. Renovales began his
+work for the contractor, but after a few months the latter seemed
+dissatisfied. Not that Signor Mariano was losing power, not at all, but
+his agents complained of a certain monotony in the subjects of his
+works. The dealer advised him to travel; he might stay awhile in Umbria,
+painting peasants in ascetic landscapes, or old churches; he might--and
+this was the best thing to do--move to Venice. How much Signor Mariano
+could accomplish in those canals! And it was thus that the idea of
+leaving Rome first came to the painter.
+
+Josephina did not object. That daily round of receptions in the
+countless embassies and legations was beginning to bore her. Now that
+the charm of the first impressions had disappeared, Josephina noticed
+that the great ladies treated her with an annoying condescension as if
+she had descended from her rank in marrying an artist. Besides, the
+younger men in the embassies, the attachés of different nationalities,
+some light, some dark, who sought relief from their celibacy without
+going outside diplomatic society, were disgracefully impudent as they
+danced with her or went through the figures of a cotillion, as if they
+considered her an easy conquest, seeing her married to an artist who
+could not display an ugly uniform in the drawing rooms. They made
+cynical declarations to her in English or German and she had to keep her
+temper, smiling and biting her lips, close to Renovales, who did not
+understand a word and showed his satisfaction at the attentions of which
+his wife was the object on the part of the fashionable youths whose
+manners he tried to imitate.
+
+The trip was decided on. They would go to Venice! Their friend Cotoner
+said "Good-by," he was sorry to part from them but his place was in
+Rome. The Pope was ailing just at that time and the painter, in the hope
+of his death, was preparing canvases of all sizes, striving to guess who
+would be his successor.
+
+As he went back in his memories, Renovales always thought of his life in
+Venice with a sort of pleasant homesickness. It was the best period of
+his life. The enchanting city of the lagoons,--bathed in golden light,
+lulled by the lapping of the water, fascinated him from the first
+moment, making him forget his love for the human form. For some time his
+enthusiasm for the nude was calmed. He worshiped the old palaces, the
+solitary canals, the lagoon with its green, motionless waiter, the soul
+of a majestic past, which seemed to breathe in the solemn old age of the
+dead, eternally smiling city.
+
+They lived in the Foscarini palace, a huge building with red walls and
+casements of white stone that opened on a little alley of water
+adjoining the Grand Canal. It was the former abode of merchants,
+navigators and conquerors of the Isles of the East who in times gone by
+had worn on their heads the golden horn of the Doges. The modern spirit,
+utilitarian and irreverent, had converted the palace into a tenement,
+dividing gilded drawing rooms with ugly partitions, establishing
+kitchens in the filigreed arcades of the seignorial court, filling the
+marble galleries to which the centuries gave the amber-like transparency
+of old ivory, with clothes hung out to dry and replacing the gaps in the
+superb mosaic with cheap square tiles.
+
+Renovales and his wife occupied the apartment nearest the Grand Canal.
+Mornings, Josephina saw from a bay window the rapid silent approach of
+her husband's gondola. The gondolier, accustomed to the service of
+artists, shouted to the painter, till Renovales came down with his box
+of water-colors and the boat started immediately through the narrow,
+winding canals, moving the silvered comb of its prow from one side to
+the other as if it were feeling the way. What mornings of placid silence
+in the sleeping water of an alley, between two palaces whose boldly
+projecting roofs kept the surface of the little canal in perpetual
+shadow! The gondolier slept stretched out in one of the curving ends of
+his boat and Renovales, sitting beside the black canopy, painted his
+Venetian water-colors, a new type that his impresario in Rome received
+with the greatest enthusiasm. His deftness enabled him to produce these
+works with as much facility as if they were mechanical copies. In the
+maze of canals he had one of his own which he called his "estate" on
+account of the money it netted him. He had painted again and again its
+dead, silent waters which all day long were never rippled except by his
+gondola; two old palaces with broken blinds, the doors covered with the
+crust of years, stairways rotted with mold and in the background a
+little arch of light, a marble bridge and under it the life, the
+movement, the sun of a broad, busy canal. The neglected little alley
+came to life every week under Renovales' brush--he could paint it with
+his eyes shut--and the business initiative of the Roman Jew scattered it
+through the world.
+
+The afternoons Mariano passed with his wife. Sometimes they went in a
+gondola to the promenade of the Lido and sitting on the sandy beach,
+watched the angry surface of the open Adriatic, that stretched its
+tossing white caps to the horizon, like a flock of snowy sheep hurrying
+in the rush of a panic.
+
+Other afternoons they walked in the Square of Saint Mark, under the
+arcades of its three rows of palaces where they could see in the
+background, by the last rays of the sun, the pale gold of the basilica
+gleaming, as if in its walls and domes there were crystallized all the
+wealth of the ancient Republic.
+
+Renovales, with his wife on his arm, walked calmly as if the majesty of
+the place impelled him to a sort of noble bearing. The august silence
+was not disturbed by the deafening hubbub of other great capitals; no
+rattling of carts or footsteps of horses or hucksters' cries. The
+Square, with its white marble pavement, was a huge drawing room through
+which the visitors passed as if they were making a call. The musicians
+of the Venice band were gathered in the center with their hats
+surmounted by black waving plumes. The blasts of the Wagnerian brasses,
+galloping in the mad ride of the Valkyries, made the marble columns
+shake and seemed to give life to the four golden horses that reared over
+space with silent whinnies on the cornice of St. Mark's.
+
+The dark-feathered doves of Venice scattered in playful spirals,
+somewhat frightened at the music, finally settled, like rain, on the
+tables of the café. Then, taking flight again, they blackened the roof
+of the palaces and once more swooped down like a mantle of metallic
+luster on the groups of English tourists in green veils and round hats,
+who called them in order to offer them grain.
+
+Josephina, with childish eagerness, left her husband in order to buy a
+cone full of grain, and spreading it out in her gloved hands she
+gathered the wards of St. Mark around her; they rested on the flowers of
+her head, fluttering like fantastic crests, they hopped on her
+shoulders, or lined up on her outstretched arms, they clung desperately
+to her slight hips, trying to walk around her waist, and others, more
+daring, as if possessed of human mischievousness, scratched her breast,
+reached out their beaks striving to caress her ruddy, half-opened, lips
+through the veil. She laughed, trembling at the tickling of the animated
+cloud that rubbed against her body. Her husband watched her, laughing
+too, and certain that no one but she would understand him, he called to
+her in Spanish.
+
+"My, but you are beautiful! I wish I could paint your picture! If it
+weren't for the people, I would kiss you."
+
+Venice was the scene of her happiest days. She lived quietly while her
+husband worked, taking odd corners of the city for his models. When he
+left the house, her placid calm was not disturbed by any troublesome
+thought. This was painting, she was sure,--and not the conditions of
+affairs in Rome, where he would shut himself up with shameless women who
+were not afraid to pose stark naked. She loved him with a renewed
+passion, she petted him with constant caresses. It was then that her
+daughter was born, their only child.
+
+Majestic Doña Emilia could not remain in Madrid when she learned that
+she was going to be a grandmother. Her poor Josephina, in a foreign
+land, with no one to take care of her but her husband, who had some
+talent according to what people said, but who seemed to her rather
+ordinary! At her son-in-law's expense, she made the trip to Venice and
+there she stayed for several months, fuming against the city, which she
+had never visited in her diplomatic travels. The distinguished lady
+considered that no cities were inhabitable except the capitals that have
+a court. Pshaw! Venice! A shabby town that no one liked but writers of
+romanzas and decorators of fans, and where there were nothing higher
+than consuls. She liked Rome with its Pope and kings. Besides, it made
+her seasick to ride in the gondolas and she complained constantly of the
+rheumatism, blaming it to the dampness of the lagoons.
+
+Renovales, who had feared for Josephina's life, believing that her weak,
+delicate constitution could not stand the shock, broke out into cries of
+joy when he received the little one in his arms and looked at the mother
+with her head resting on the pillow as if she were dead. Her white face
+was hardly outlined against the white of the linen. His first thought
+was for her, for the pale features, distorted by the recent crisis,
+which gradually were growing calmer with rest. Poor little girl! How she
+had suffered! But as he tip-toed out of the bed room in order not to
+disturb the heavy sleep that, after two cruel days, had overpowered the
+sick woman, he gave himself up to his admiration for the bit of flesh
+that lay in the huge flabby arms of the grandmother, wrapped in fine
+linen. Ah, what a dear little thing! He looked at the livid little face,
+the big head, thinly covered with hair, seeking for some suggestion of
+himself in this surge of flesh that was in motion and still without
+definite form. "Mamma, whom does she look like?"
+
+Doña Emilia was surprised at his blindness. Whom; should she look like?
+Like him, no one but him. She was large, enormous; she had seen few
+babies as large as this one. It did not seem possible that her poor
+daughter could live after giving birth to "that." They could not
+complain that she was not healthy; she was as ruddy as a country baby.
+
+"She's a Renovales; she's yours, wholly yours, Mariano. We belong to a
+different class."
+
+And Renovales, without noticing his mother's words, saw only that his
+daughter was like him, overjoyed to see how robust she was, shouting his
+pleasure at the health of which the grandmother spoke in a disappointed
+tone.
+
+In vain did he and Doña Emilia try to dissuade Josephina from nursing
+the baby. The little woman, in spite of the weakness that kept her
+motionless in bed, wept and cried almost as she had in the crises that
+had so terrified Renovales.
+
+"I won't have it," she said with that obstinacy that made her so
+terrible.
+
+"I won't have a strange woman's milk for my daughter. I will nurse her,
+her mother."
+
+And they had to give the baby to her.
+
+When Josephina seemed recovered, her mother, feeling that her mission
+was over, went home to Madrid. She was bored to death in that silent
+city of Venice, night after night she thought she was dead, for she
+could not hear a single sound from her bed. The calm, interrupted now
+and then by the shouts of the gondoliers filled her with the same terror
+that she felt in a cemetery. She had no friends, she did not "shine";
+there was nobody in that dirty hole and nobody knew her. She was always
+recalling her distinguished friends in Madrid where she thought she was
+an indispensable personage. The modesty of her granddaughter's
+christening left a deep impression in her mind in spite of the fact that
+they gave her name to the child; an insignificant little party that
+needed only two gondolas; she, who was the godmother, with the
+godfather, an old Venetian painter, who was a friend of Renovales and,
+besides, Renovales himself and two artists, a Frenchman and another
+Spaniard. The Patriarch of Venice did not officiate at the baptism, not
+even a bishop. And she knew so many of them at home. A mere priest, who
+was in a shameful hurry, had been sufficient to christen the
+granddaughter of the famous diplomat, in a little church, as the sun was
+setting. She went away repeating once more that Josephina was killing
+herself, that it was perfect folly for her to nurse the baby in her
+delicate condition, regretting that she did not follow the example of
+her mother who had always intrusted her children to nurses.
+
+Josephina cried bitterly when her mother went, but Renovales said
+"good-by" with ill-concealed joy. _Bon voyage_! He simply could not
+endure the woman, always complaining that she was being neglected when
+she saw how her son-in-law was working to make her daughter happy. The
+only thing he agreed with her in was in scolding Josephina tenderly for
+her obstinacy in nursing the baby. Poor little _Maja Desnuda_! Her form
+had lost its bud-like daintiness in the full flower of motherhood.
+
+She appeared more robust, but the stoutness was accompanied by an anemic
+weakness. Her husband, seeing how she was losing her daintiness, loved
+her with more tender compassion. Poor little girl! How good she was! She
+was sacrificing herself for her daughter.
+
+When the baby was a year old, the great crisis in Renovales' life
+occurred. Desirous of taking a "bath in art," of knowing what was going
+on outside of the dungeon in which he was imprisoned, painting at so
+much a piece, he left Josephina in Venice and made a short trip to Paris
+to see its famous Salon. He came back transfigured, with a new fever for
+work and a determination to transform his existence which filled his
+wife with astonishment and fear. He was going to break with his
+_impresario_, he would no longer debase himself with that false
+painting, even if he had to beg for his living. Great things were being
+done in the world, and he felt that he had the courage to be an
+innovator, following the steps of those modern painters who made such a
+profound impression on him.
+
+Now he hated old Italy, where artists went to study under the protection
+of ignorant governments.
+
+In reality what they found there was a market of tempting commissions
+where they soon grew accustomed to taking orders, to the luxurious,
+indifferent life of easy profit. He wanted to move to Paris. But
+Josephina, who listened to Renovales' fancies in silence, unable to
+understand them for the most part, modified this determination by her
+advice. She too wanted to leave Venice. The city seemed gloomy in the
+winter with its ceaseless rains that left the bridges slippery and the
+marble alleys impassable. Since they were determined to break up camp,
+why not go back to Madrid? Mamma was sick, she complained in all her
+letters at living so far from her daughter. Josephina wanted to see her,
+she had a presentiment that her mother was going to die. Renovales
+thought it over; he too wanted to go back to Spain. He felt homesick;
+he thought of the great stir he would cause there, teaching his new
+methods amid the general routine. The desire of shocking the
+Academicians, who had accepted him before because he had renounced his
+ideals, tempted him.
+
+They went back to Madrid with little Milita, as they called her for
+short, abbreviating the diminutive of Emilia. Renovales brought with him
+as his whole capital some few thousand lire, that represented
+Josephina's savings and the product of his sale of part of the furniture
+that decorated the poorly furnished halls of the Foscarini palace.
+
+At first it was hard. Doña Emilia died a few months after they reached
+Madrid. Her funeral did not come up to the dreams the illustrious widow
+had always fashioned. Hardly a score of her countless relatives were
+present. Poor old lady, if she had known how her hopes were destined to
+be disappointed! Renovales was almost glad of the event. With it, the
+only tie that bound them to society was broken. He and Josephina lived
+in a fifth story flat on the Calle de Alcalá, near the Plaza de Toros,
+with a large terrace that the artist converted into a studio. Their life
+was modest, secluded, humble, without friends or functions. She spent
+the day taking care of her daughter and the house, without help except a
+dull, poorly-paid maid. Oftentimes when she seemed most active, she fell
+into a sudden languor, complaining of strange, new ailments.
+
+Mariano hardly ever worked at home; he painted out of doors. He despised
+the conventional light of the studio, the closeness of its atmosphere.
+He wandered through the suburbs of Madrid and the neighboring provinces
+in search of rough, simple types, whose faces seemed to bear the stamp
+of the ancient Spanish soul. He climbed the Guadarrama in the midst of
+winter, standing alone in the snowy fields like an Arctic explorer, to
+transfer to his canvas the century-old pines, twisted and black under
+their caps of frozen sleet.
+
+When the Exhibition took place, Renovales' name became famous in a
+flash. He did not present a huge picture with a key, as he had at his
+first triumph. They were small canvases, studies prompted by a chance
+meeting; bits of nature, men and landscapes reproduced with an
+astonishing, brutal truth that shocked the public.
+
+The sober fathers of painting writhed as if they had received a slap in
+the face, before those sketches that seemed to flame among the other
+dead, leaden pictures. They admitted that Renovales was a painter, but
+he lacked imagination, invention, his only merit was his ability to
+transfer to the canvas what his eyes saw. The younger men flocked to the
+standard of the new master; there were endless disputes, impassioned
+arguments, deadly hatred, and over this battle Renovales', name
+flitted, appearing almost daily in the newspapers, till he was almost as
+celebrated as a bull-fighter or an orator in the Congress.
+
+The struggle lasted for six years, giving rise to a storm of insults and
+applause every time that Renovales exhibited one of his works, and
+meanwhile the master, discussed as he was, lived in poverty, forced to
+paint water-colors in the old style which he secretly sent to his dealer
+in Rome. But all combats have their end. The public finally accepted as
+unquestionable a name that they saw every day; his enemies, weakened by
+the unconscious effect of public opinion, grew tired, and the master
+like all innovators, as soon as the first success of the scandal was
+over, began to limit his daring, pruning and softening his original
+brutality. The dreaded painter became fashionable. The easy,
+instantaneous success he had won at the beginning of his career was
+renewed, but more solidly and more definitely, like a conquest made by
+rough, hard paths when there is a struggle at every step.
+
+Money, the fickle page, came back to him, holding the train of glory. He
+sold pictures at prices unheard of in Spain and they grew fabulously as
+they were repeated by his admirers. Some American millionaires,
+surprised that a Spanish painter should be mentioned abroad and that the
+principal reviews in Europe should reproduce his works, bought canvases
+as objects of great luxury. The master, embittered by the poverty of his
+years of struggle, suddenly felt a longing for money, an overpowering
+greed that his friends had never known in him. His wife seemed to grow
+more sickly every day; her daughter was growing up and he wanted his
+Milita to have the education and the luxuries of a princess. They now
+had a respectable house of their own, but he wanted something better for
+them. His business instinct, which everyone recognized in him when he
+was not blinded by some artistic prejudice, strove to make his brush an
+instrument of great profits.
+
+Pictures were bound to disappear, according to the master. Modern rooms,
+small and soberly decorated, were not fitted for the large canvases that
+ornamented the walls of drawing rooms in the old days. Besides, the
+reception rooms of the present, like the rooms in a doll's house, were
+good merely for pretty pictures marked by stereotyped mannerisms. Scenes
+taken from nature were out of place in this background. The only way to
+make money then was to paint portraits and Renovales forgot his
+distinction as an innovator in order to win at any cost fame as a
+portrait painter of society people. He painted members of the royal
+family in all sorts of postures, not omitting any of their important
+occupations; on foot, and on horseback, with a general's plumes or a
+gray hunting jacket, killing pigeons or riding in an automobile. He
+portrayed the beauties of the oldest families, concealing imperceptibly,
+with clever dissimulation, the ravages of time, giving firmness to the
+flabby flesh with his brush, holding up the heavy eyelids and cheeks
+that sagged with fatigue and the poison of rouge. After successes at
+court, the rich considered a portrait by Renovales as an indispensable
+decoration for their drawing rooms. They sought him because his
+signature cost thousands of dollars; to possess a canvas by him was an
+evidence of opulence, quite as necessary as an automobile of the best
+make.
+
+Renovales was as rich as a painter can be. It was at that time that he
+built what envious people called his "pantheon"; a magnificent mansion
+behind the iron grating of the Retiro.
+
+He had a violent desire to build a home after his own heart and image,
+like those mollusks that build a shell with the substance of their
+bodies so that it may serve both as a dwelling and a defense. There
+awakened in him that longing for show, for pompous, swaggering, amusing
+originality that lies dormant in the mind of every artist. At first he
+planned a reproduction of Rubens' palace in Antwerp, open _loggie_ for
+studios, leafy gardens covered with flowers at all seasons, and in the
+paths, gazelles, giraffes, birds of bright plumage, like flying flowers,
+and other exotic animals which this great painter used as models in his
+desire to copy Nature in all its magnificence.
+
+But he was forced to give up this dream, on account of the nature of the
+building sites in Madrid, a few thousand feet of barren, chalky soil,
+bounded by a wretched fence and as dry as only Castile can be. Since
+this Rubenesque ostentation was not possible, he took refuge in
+Classicism and in a little garden he erected a sort of Greek temple that
+should serve at once as a dwelling and a studio. On the triangular
+pediment rose three tripods like torch-holders, that gave the house the
+appearance of a commemorative tomb. But in order that those who stopped
+outside the grating might make no mistake, the master had garlands of
+laurel, palettes surrounded with crowns, carved on the stone façade, and
+in the midst of this display of simple modesty a short inscription in
+gold letters of average size--"Renovales." Exactly like a store. Inside,
+in two studios where no one ever painted and which led to the real
+working studio, the finished pictures were exhibited on easels covered
+with antique textures, and callers gazed with wonder at the collection
+of properties fit for a theater,--suits of armor, tapestries, old
+standards hanging from the ceiling, show-cases full of ancient
+knick-knacks, deep couches with canopies of oriental stuffs supported by
+lances, century old coffers and open secretaries shining with the pale
+gold of their rows of drawers.
+
+These studios where no one studied were like the luxurious line of
+waiting rooms in the house of a doctor who charges twenty dollars for a
+consultation, or like the anterooms, furnished in dark leather with
+venerable pictures, of a famous lawyer, who never opens his mouth
+without carrying off a large portion of his client's fortune. People who
+waited in these two studios spacious as the nave of a church, with the
+silent majesty which comes with the lapse of years, were brought to the
+necessary frame of mind to make them submit to the enormous prices the
+master demanded.
+
+Renovales had "made good" and he could rest calmly, as his admirers
+said. And still the master was gloomy; his nature, embittered by his
+years of silent suffering, broke out in violent fits of temper.
+
+The slightest attack by some insignificant enemy was enough to send him
+into a rage. His pupils thought it was due to the fact that he was
+getting old. His struggles had so aged him that with his heavy beard and
+his round shoulders he looked ten years older than he was.
+
+In this white temple, on the pediment of which his name shone in letters
+of glorious gold, he was not so happy as in the modest houses in Italy
+or the little garret near the Plaza de Toros. All that was left of the
+Josephina of the first months of his married life was a distant shadow.
+The "_Maja Desnuda_" of the happy nights in Rome and Venice was nothing
+but a memory. On her return to Spain the false stoutness of motherhood
+had disappeared.
+
+She grew thin, as if some hidden fire were devouring her; the flesh that
+had covered her body with graceful curves melted away in the flames that
+burned within her. The sharp angles and dark hollows of her skeleton
+began to show beneath her pale, flabby flesh. Poor _"Maja Desnuda"!_
+Her husband pitied her, attributing her decline to the struggles and
+cares she had suffered when they first returned to Madrid.
+
+For her sake, he was eager to conquer, to become rich, that he might
+provide her with the comforts he had dreamed of. Her illness seemed to
+be mental; it was neurasthenia, melancholia. The poor woman had suffered
+without doubt at being condemned to a pauper's existence, in Madrid,
+where she had once lived in comparative splendor, this time in a
+wretched house, struggling with poverty, forced to perform the most
+menial tasks. She complained of strange pains, her legs lost their
+strength, she sank into a chair where she would stay motionless for
+hours at a time, weeping without knowing why. Her digestion was poor;
+for weeks her stomach refused all nourishment. At night she would toss
+about in bed, unable to sleep and at daybreak she was up flitting about
+the house with a feverish activity, turning things upside down, finding
+fault with the servant, with her husband, with herself, until suddenly
+she would collapse from the height of her excitement and begin to cry.
+
+These domestic trials broke the painter's spirit, but he bore them
+patiently. Now a gentle sympathy was added to his former love, when he
+saw her so weak, without any remnant of her former charm except her
+eyes, sunk in their bluish sockets, bright with the mysterious fire of
+fever. Poor little girl! Her struggles brought her to such a pass. Her
+weakness filled Renovales with a sort of remorse. Her lot was that of
+the soldier who sacrifices himself for his general's glory. He had
+conquered, but he left behind him the woman he loved, fallen in the
+struggle because she was the weaker.
+
+He admired, too, her maternal self-sacrifice. The baby, Milita, who
+attracted attention because of her whiteness and ruddiness, had the
+strength that her mother lacked. The greediness of this strong,
+enslaving creature had absorbed all of the mother's life.
+
+When the artist was rich and installed his family in the new house, he
+thought that Josephina was going to get well. The doctors were confident
+of a rapid improvement. The first day that they walked through the
+parlors and studios of the new house, taking note of the furniture and
+the valuables, old and new, with a glance of satisfaction, Renovales put
+him arm around the waist of the weak little doll, bending his head over
+her, caressing her forehead with his bearded lips.
+
+Everything was hers, the house and its sumptuous decorations, hers too
+was the money that was left and that he would continue to make. She was
+the owner, the absolute mistress, she could spend all she wanted to, he
+would stand for everything. She could wear stylish clothes, have
+carriages, make her former friends green with envy, be proud of being
+the wife of a famous painter, much more proud than others who had landed
+a ducal crown by marriage. Was she satisfied?
+
+She said "Yes," nodding her assent weakly, and she even stood on tiptoe
+to kiss the lips that seemed to caress her through a cloud of hair, but
+her expression was sad and her listless movements were like a withered
+flower's, as if there was no joy on earth that could lift her out of
+this dejection.
+
+After a few days, when the first impress of the change in her mode of
+life was over, the old outbreaks that had so often disturbed their
+former dwelling began again in the luxurious palace.
+
+Renovales found her in the dining-room with her head in her hands,
+crying, but unwilling to explain the cause of her tears. When he tried
+to take her in his arms, caressing her like a child, the little woman
+became as agitated as if she had received an insult.
+
+"Let me go!" she cried with a hostile look. "Don't touch me. Go away!"
+
+At other times he looked all over the house for her in vain, questioning
+Milita who, accustomed to her mother's outbreaks and made selfish by her
+girlish strength, paid little attention to her and kept on playing with
+her dolls.
+
+"I don't know, papa; she's probably crying up stairs," she would answer
+naively.
+
+And in some corner of the upper story, in the bedroom, beside the bed or
+among the clothes in the wardrobe, the husband would find her, sitting
+on the floor with her chin in her hands, her eyes fixed on the wall as
+if she were looking at something invisible and mysterious that only she
+could see. She was not crying, her eyes were dry and enlarged with an
+expression of terror, and her husband tried in vain to attract her
+attention. She remained motionless, cold, indifferent to his caresses,
+as if he were a stranger, as if there were a hopeless gap between them.
+
+"I want to die," she said in a serious, tense tone. "I am of no use in
+the world; I want to rest."
+
+The deadly resignation would change a moment later into furious
+antagonism. Renovales could never tell how the quarrel began. The most
+insignificant word on his part, the expression of his face, silence
+even, was all that was needed to bring on the storm. Josephina began to
+speak with a taunting accent that made her words cut like cold steel.
+She found fault with the painter for what he did and what he did not do,
+for his most trifling habits, for what he painted, and presently,
+extending the radius of her insults to include the whole world, she
+broke out into denunciations of the distinguished people who formed her
+husband's clientele and brought him such profits. He might be satisfied
+with painting the portraits of those people, disreputable society men
+and women. Her mother, who was in close touch with that society, had
+told her many stories about them. The women she knew still better;
+almost all of them had been her companions at boarding-school or her
+friends. They had married to make sport of their husbands; they all had
+a past, they were worse than the women who walked the streets at night.
+This house with all its façade of laurels and its gold letters was a
+brothel. One of these fine days she would come into the studio and throw
+them into the street to have their pictures painted somewhere else.
+
+"For God's sake, Josephina," Renovales murmured with a troubled voice,
+"don't talk like that. Don't think of such outrageous things. I don't
+see how you can talk that way. Milita will hear us."
+
+Now that her nervous anger was exhausted, Josephina would burst into
+tears and Renovales would have to leave the table and take her to bed,
+where she lay, crying out for the hundredth time that she wanted to die.
+
+This life was even more intolerable because he was faithful to his wife,
+because his love, mingled with habit and routine, kept him firmly
+devoted to her.
+
+At the end of the afternoon, several of his friends used to gather in
+his studio, among them the jolly Cotoner who had moved to Madrid. When
+the twilight crept in through the huge window and made them all prone to
+friendly confidences, Renovales always made the same statement.
+
+"As a boy I had my good times just like anyone else, but since I was
+married I have never had anything to do with any woman except my own
+wife. I am proud to say so."
+
+And the big man drew himself up to his full height and stroked his
+beard, as proud of his faithfulness to his wife as other men are of
+their good fortune in love.
+
+When they talked about beautiful women in his presence, or looked at
+portraits of great foreign beauties, the master did not conceal his
+approval.
+
+"Very beautiful! Very pretty to paint!"
+
+His enthusiasm over beauty never went beyond the limits of art. There
+was only one woman in the world for him, his wife; the others were
+models.
+
+He, who carried in his mind a perfect orgy of flesh, who worshiped the
+nude with religious fervor, reserved all his manly homage for his wife
+who grew constantly more sickly, more gloomy, and waited with the
+patience of a lover for a moment of calm, a ray of sunlight among the
+incessant storms.
+
+The doctors, who admitted their inability to cure the nervous disorder
+that was consuming the wife, had hopes of a sudden change and
+recommended to the husband that he should be extremely kind to her. This
+only increased his patient gentleness. They attributed the nervous
+trouble to the birth and nursing of the child, that had broken her weak
+health; they suspected, too, the existence of some unknown cause that
+kept the sick woman in constant excitement.
+
+Renovales, who studied his wife closely in his eagerness to recover
+peace in his house, soon discovered the true cause of her illness.
+
+Milita was growing up; already she was a woman. She was fourteen years
+old and wore long skirts, and her healthy beauty was beginning to
+attract the glances of men.
+
+"One of these days they'll carry her off," said the master laughing.
+And his wife, when she heard him talking about marriage, making
+conjectures on his future son-in-law, closed her eyes and said in a
+tense voice, that revealed her insuperable obstinacy:
+
+"She shall marry anyone she wants to,--except a painter. I would rather
+see her dead than that."
+
+It was then Renovales divined his wife's true illness. It was jealousy,
+a terrific, deadly, ruinous jealousy; it was the sadness of realizing
+that she was sickly. She was certain of her husband; she knew his
+declarations of faithfulness to her. But when the painter spoke of his
+artistic interests in her presence, he did not hide his worship of
+beauty, his religious cult of form. Even if he was silent, she
+penetrated his thoughts; she read in him that fervor which dated from
+his youth and had grown greater as the years went by. When she looked at
+the statues of sovereign nakedness that decorated the studios, when she
+glanced through the albums of pictures where the light of flesh shone
+brightly amid the shadows of the engraving, she compared them mentally
+with her own form emaciated by illness.
+
+Renovales' eyes that seemed to worship every beauty of form were the
+same eyes that saw her in all her ugliness. That man could never love
+her. His faithfulness was pity, perhaps habit, unconscious virtue. She
+could not believe that it was love. This illusion might be possible with
+another man, but he was an artist. By day he worshiped beauty; at night
+he was brought face to face with ugliness, with physical wretchedness.
+
+She was constantly tormented by jealousy, that embittered her mind and
+consumed her life, a jealousy that was inconsolable for the very reason
+that it had no real foundation.
+
+The consciousness of her ugliness brought with it a sadness, an
+insatiable envy of everyone, a desire to die but to kill the world
+first, that she might drag it down with her in her fall.
+
+Her husband's caresses irritated her like an insult. Maybe he thought he
+loved her, maybe his advances were in good faith, but she read his
+thoughts and she found there her irresistible enemy, the rival that
+overshadowed her with her beauty. And there was no remedy for this. She
+was married to a man who, as long as he lived, would be faithful to his
+religion of beauty. How well she remembered the days when she had
+refused to allow her husband to paint her youthful body! If youth and
+beauty would but come back to her, she would recklessly cast off all her
+veils, would stand in the middle of the studio as arrogantly as a
+bacchante, crying,
+
+"Paint! Satisfy yourself with my flesh, and whenever you think of your
+eternal beloved, whom you call Beauty, fancy that you see her with my
+face, that she has my body!"
+
+It was a terrible misfortune to be the wife of an artist. She would
+never marry her daughter to a painter; she would rather see her dead.
+Men who carry with them the demon of form, cannot live in peace and
+happiness except with a companion who is eternally young, eternally
+fair.
+
+Her husband's fidelity made her desperate. That chaste artist was always
+musing over the memory of naked beauties, fancying pictures he did not
+dare to paint for fear of her. With her sick woman's penetration, she
+seemed to read this longing in her husband's face. She would have
+preferred certain infidelity, to see him in love with another woman, mad
+with passion. He might return from such a wandering outside the bonds of
+matrimony, wearied and humble, begging her forgiveness; but from the
+other, he would never return.
+
+When Renovates discovered the cause of her sadness, he tenderly
+undertook to cure his wife's mental disorder. He avoided speaking of his
+artistic interests in her presence; he discovered terrible defects in
+the fair ladies who sought him as a portrait painter; he praised
+Josephina's spiritual beauty; he painted pictures of her, putting her
+features on the canvas, but beautifying them with, subtle skill.
+
+She smiled, with that eternal condescension that a woman has for the
+most stupendous, most shameful deceits, as long as they flatter her.
+
+"It's you," said Renovales, "your face, your charm, your air of
+distinction. I really don't think I have made you as beautiful as you
+are."
+
+She continued to smile, but soon her look grew hard, her lips tightened
+and the shadow spread little by little across her face.
+
+She fixed her eyes on the painter's as if she were scrutinizing his
+thoughts.
+
+It was a lie. Her husband was flattering her; he thought he loved her,
+but only his flesh was faithful. The invincible enemy, the eternal
+beloved, was mistress of his mind.
+
+Tortured by this mental unfaithfulness and by the rage which her
+helplessness produced, she would gradually fall into one of the nervous
+storms that broke out in a shower of tears and a thunder of insults and
+recriminations.
+
+Renovales' life was a hell at the very time when he possessed the glory
+and wealth which he had dreamed of so many years, building on them his
+hope of happiness.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+It was three o'clock in the afternoon when the painter went home after
+his luncheon with the Hungarian.
+
+As he entered the dining-room, before going to the studio, he saw two
+women with their hats and veils on who looked as if they were getting
+ready to go out. One of them, as tall as the painter, threw her arms
+around his neck.
+
+"Papa, dear, we waited for you until nearly two o'clock. Did you have a
+good luncheon?"
+
+And she kissed him noisily, rubbing her fresh, rosy cheeks against the
+master's gray beard.
+
+Renovales smiled good naturedly under this shower of caresses. Ah, his
+Milita! She was the only joy in that gloomy, showy house. It was she who
+sweetened that atmosphere of tedious strife which seemed to emanate from
+the sick woman. He looked at his daughter with an air of comic
+gallantry.
+
+"Very pretty; yes, I swear you are very pretty to-day. You are a perfect
+Rubens, my dear, a brunette Rubens. And where are we going to show off?"
+
+He looked with a father's pride at that strong, rosy body, in which the
+transition to womanhood was marked by a sort of passing delicacy--the
+result of her rapid growth--and a dark circle around her eyes. Her soft,
+mysterious glance was that of a woman who is beginning to understand the
+meaning of life. She dressed with a sort of exotic elegance; her clothes
+had a masculine appearance; her mannish collar and tie were in keeping
+with the rigid energy of her movements, with her wide-soled English
+boots, and the violent swing of her legs that opened her skirts like a
+compass when she walked, more intent on speed and a heavy step than on a
+graceful carriage. The master admired her healthy beauty. What a
+splendid specimen! The race would not die out with her. She was like
+him, wholly like him; if he had been a woman, he would have been like
+his Milita.
+
+She kept on talking, without taking her arms from her father's
+shoulders, with her eyes, tremulous like molten gold, fixed on the
+master.
+
+She was going for her daily walk with "Miss," a two hours' tramp through
+the Castellana and the Retiro, without stopping a moment to sit down,
+taking a peripatetic lesson in English on the way. For the first time
+Renovates turned around to speak to "Miss," a stout woman with a red,
+wrinkled face who, when she smiled, showed a set of teeth that shone
+like yellow dominoes. In the studio Renovales and his friends often
+laughed at "Miss's" appearance and eccentricities, at her red wig that
+was placed on her head as carelessly as a hat, at her terrible false
+teeth, at her bonnets that she made herself out of chance bits of ribbon
+and discarded ornaments, of her chronic lack of appetite, that forced
+her to live on beer, which kept her in a continual state of confusion,
+which was revealed in her exaggerated curtsies. Soft and heavy from
+drink, she was alarmed at the approach of the hour of the walk, a daily
+torment for her, as she tried painfully to keep up with Milita's long
+strides. Seeing the painter looking at her, she turned even redder and
+made three profound curtsies.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Renovales, oh, sir!"
+
+And she did not call him "Lord," because the master greeting her with a
+nod, forgot her presence and began to talk again with his daughter.
+
+Milita was eager to hear about her father's luncheon with Tekli. And so
+he had had some Chianti? Selfish man! When he knew how much she liked
+it! He ought to have let them know sooner that he would not be home.
+Fortunately Cotoner was at the house and mamma had made him stay, so
+that they would not have to lunch alone. Their old friend had gone to
+the kitchen and prepared one of those dishes he had learned to make in
+the days when he was a landscape-painter. Milita observed that all
+landscape-painters knew something about cooking. Their outdoor life, the
+necessities of their wandering existence among country inns and huts,
+defying poverty, gave them a liking for this art.
+
+They had had a very pleasant luncheon; mamma had laughed at Cotoner's
+jokes, who was always in good humor, but during the dessert, when
+Soldevilla, Renovales' favorite pupil, came, she had felt indisposed and
+had disappeared to hide her eyes swimming with tears and her breast that
+heaved with sobs.
+
+"She's probably upstairs," said the girl with a sort of indifference,
+accustomed to these outbreaks. "Good-by, papa, dear, a kiss. Cotoner and
+Soldevilla are waiting for you in the studio. Another kiss. Let me bite
+you."
+
+And after fixing her little teeth gently in one of the master's cheeks,
+she ran out, followed by Miss, who was already puffing in anticipation
+at the thought of the tiresome walk.
+
+Renovales remained motionless as if he hesitated to shake off the
+atmosphere of affection in which his daughter enveloped him. Milita was
+his, wholly his. She loved her mother, but her affection was cold in
+comparison with the ardent passion she felt for him--that vague,
+instinctive preference girls feel for their fathers and which is, as it
+were, a forecast of the worship the man they love will later inspire in
+them.
+
+For a moment he thought of looking for Josephina to console her, but
+after a brief reflection, he gave up the idea. It probably was nothing;
+his daughter was not disturbed; a sudden fit such as she usually had. If
+he went upstairs he would run the risk of an unpleasant scene that would
+spoil the afternoon, rob him of his desire to work and banish the
+youthful light-heartedness that filled him after his luncheon with
+Tekli.
+
+He turned his steps towards the last studio, the only one that deserved
+the name, for it was there he worked, and he saw Cotoner sitting in a
+huge armchair, the seat of which sagged under his corpulent frame, with
+his elbows resting on the oaken arms, his waistcoat unbuttoned to
+relieve his well-filled paunch, his head sunk between his shoulders, his
+face red and sweating, his eyes half closed with the sweet joy of
+digestion in that comfortable atmosphere heated by a huge stove.
+
+Cotoner was getting old; his mustache was white and his head was bald,
+but his face was as rosy and shining as a child's. He breathed the
+placidness of a respectable old bachelor whose only love is for good
+living and who appreciates the digestive sleepiness of the
+boaconstrictor as the greatest of happiness.
+
+He was tired of living in Rome. Commissions were scarce. The Popes lived
+longer than the Biblical patriarchs. The chromo portraits of the Pontiff
+had simply forced him out of business. Besides, he was old and the young
+painters who came to Rome did not know him; they were poor fellows who
+looked on him as a clown, and never laid aside their seriousness except
+to make sport of him. His time had passed. The echoes of Mariano's
+triumphs at home had come to his ears, had determined him to move to
+Madrid. Life was the same everywhere. He had friends in Madrid, too. And
+here he had continued the life he had led in Rome, without any effort,
+feeling a kind of longing for glory in that narrow personality which
+had made him a mere day-laborer in art, as if his relations with
+Renovales imposed on him the duty of seeking a place near his in the
+world of painting.
+
+He had gone back to landscapes, never winning any greater success than
+the simple admirations of wash-women and brickmakers who gathered around
+his easel in the suburbs of Madrid, whispering to each other that the
+gentleman who wore on his lapel the variegated button of his numerous
+Papal Orders, must be a famous old "buck," one of the great painters the
+papers talked about. Renovales had secured for him two honorable
+mentions at the Exhibitions and after this victory, shared with all the
+young chaps who were just beginning, Cotoner settled down in the rut, to
+rest forever, counting that the mission of his life was fulfilled.
+
+Life in Madrid was no more difficult for him than in Rome. He slept at
+the house of a priest whom he had known in Italy, and had accompanied on
+his tours as Papal representative. This chaplain, who was employed in
+the office of the Rota, considered it a great honor to entertain the
+artist, recalling his friendly relations with the cardinals and
+believing that he was in correspondence with the Pope himself.
+
+They had agreed on a sum which he was to pay for his lodging, but the
+priest did not seem to be in any hurry for payment; he would soon give
+him a commission for a painting for some nuns for whom he was confessor.
+
+The eating problem offered still less difficulty for Cotoner. He had the
+days of the week divided among various rich families noted for their
+piety, whom he had met in Rome during the great Spanish pilgrimages.
+They were wealthy miners from Bilbao, gentlemen farmers from Andalusia,
+old marchionesses who thought about God a great deal, but continued to
+live their comfortable life to which they gave a serious tone by the
+respectable color of devotion.
+
+The painter felt closely attached to this little group; they were
+serious, religious and they ate well. Everyone called him "good
+Cotoner." The ladies smiled with gratitude when he presented them with a
+rosary or some other article of devotion brought from Rome. If they
+expressed the desire of obtaining some dispensation from the Vatican, he
+would offer to write to "his friend the cardinal." The husbands, glad to
+entertain an artist so cheaply, consulted him about the plan for a new
+chapel or the designs for an altar, and on their saint's day they would
+receive with a condescending mien some present from Cotoner--a "little
+daub," a landscape painted on a piece of wood, that often needed an
+explanation before they could understand what it was meant for.
+
+At dinners he was a constant source of amusement for these people of
+solid principles and measured words, with his stories of the strange
+doings of the "Monsignori" or the "Eminences" he used to know in Rome.
+They listened to these jokes with a sort of unction, however dubious
+they were, seeing that they came from such respectable personages.
+
+When the round of invitations was interrupted by illness or absence, and
+Cotoner lacked a place to dine, he stayed at Renovales' house without
+waiting for an invitation. The master wanted him to live with them, but
+he did not accept. He was very fond of the family; Milita played with
+him as if he were an old dog, Josephina felt a sort of affection for
+him, because his presence reminded her of the good old days in Rome. But
+Cotoner, in spite of this, seemed to be somewhat reluctant, divining the
+storms that darkened the master's life. He preferred his free existence,
+to which he adapted himself with the ease of a parasite. After dinner
+was over, he would listen to the weighty discussions between learned
+priests and serious old church-goers, nodding his approval, and an hour
+later he would be jesting impiously in some café or other with painters,
+actors and journalists. He knew everybody; he only needed to speak to an
+artist twice and he would call him by his first name and swear that he
+loved and admired him from the bottom of his heart. When Renovales came
+into the studio, he shook off his drowsiness and stretched out his short
+legs so that he could touch the floor and get out of the chair.
+
+"Did they tell you, Mariano? A magnificent dish! I made them an
+Andalusian pot-pourri! They were tickled to death over it!"
+
+He was enthusiastic over his culinary achievement as if all his merits
+were summed up in this skill. Afterwards, while Renovales was handing
+his coat and hat to the servant who followed him, Cotoner with the
+curiosity of an intimate friend who wants to know all the details of his
+idol's life, questioned him about his luncheon with the foreigner.
+
+Renovales lay down on a divan deep as a niche, between two bookcases and
+lined with piles of cushions. As they spoke of Tekli, they recalled
+friends in Rome, painters of different nationalities who twenty years
+before had walked with their heads high, following the star of hope as
+if they were hypnotized. Renovales, in his pride in his strength,
+incapable of hypocritical modesty, declared that he was the only one who
+had succeeded. Poor Tekli was a professor; his copy of Velásquez
+amounted to nothing more than the work of a patient cart horse in art.
+
+"Do you think so?" asked Cotoner doubtfully. "Is his work so poor?"
+
+His selfishness kept him from saying a word against anyone; he had no
+faith in criticism, he believed blindly in praise; thereby preserving
+his reputation as a good fellow, which gave him the entree everywhere
+and made his life easy. The figure of the Hungarian was fixed in his
+memory and made him think of a series of luncheons before he left
+Madrid.
+
+"Good afternoon, master."
+
+It was Soldevilla who came out from behind a screen with his hands
+clasped behind his back under the tail of his short sack coat, his head
+in the air, tortured by the excessive height of his stiff, shining
+collar, throwing out his chest so as to show off better his velvet
+waistcoat. His thinness and his small stature were made up for by the
+length of his blond mustache that curled around his pink little nose as
+if it were trying to reach the straight, scraggly bangs on his forehead.
+This Soldevilla was Renovales' favorite pupil--"his weakness" Cotoner
+called him. The master had fought a great battle to win him the
+fellowship at Rome; afterward he had given him the prize at several
+exhibitions.
+
+He looked on him almost as a son, attracted perhaps by the contrast
+between his own rough strength and the weakness of that artistic dandy,
+always proper, always amiable, who consulted this master about
+everything, even if afterwards he did not pay much attention to his
+advice. When he criticized his fellow painters, he did it with a
+venomous suavity, with a feminine finesse. Renovales laughed at his
+appearance and his habits and Cotoner joined in. He was like china,
+always shining; you could not find the least speck of dust on him; you
+were sure he slept in a cupboard. These present-day painters! The two
+old artists recalled the disorder of their youth, their Bohemian
+carelessness, with long beards and huge hats, all their odd
+extravagances to distinguish them from the rest of men, forming a world
+by themselves. They felt out of humor with these painters of the last
+batch--proper, prudent, incapable of doing anything absurd, copying the
+fashions of the idle and presenting the appearance of State
+functionaries, clerks, who wielded the brush.
+
+His greeting over, Soldevilla fairly overwhelmed the master with his
+effusive praise. He had been admiring the portrait of the Countess of
+Alberca.
+
+"A perfect marvel, master. The best thing you have painted, and it's
+only half done, too."
+
+This praise aroused Renovales. He got up, shoved aside the screen and
+pulled out an easel that held a large canvas, until it was opposite the
+light that came in through the wide window.
+
+On a gray background stood a woman dressed in white, with that majesty
+of beauty that is accustomed to admiration. The aigrette of feathers and
+diamonds seemed to tremble on her tawny yellow curls, the curve of her
+breasts was outlined through the lace of her low-necked gown, her gloves
+reached above her elbows, in one of her hands she held a costly fan, in
+the other, a dark cloak, lined with flame-colored satin, that slipped
+from her bare shoulders, on the point of falling. The lower part of the
+figure was merely outlined in charcoal on the white canvas. The head,
+almost finished, seemed to look at the three men with its proud eyes,
+cold, but with a false coldness that bespoke a hidden passion within, a
+dead volcano that might come to life at any moment.
+
+She was a tall, stately woman, with a charming, well-proportioned
+figure, who seemed to keep the freshness of youth, thanks to the
+healthy, comfortable life she led. The corners of her eyes were narrowed
+with a tired fold.
+
+Cotoner looked at her from his seat with chaste calmness, commenting
+tranquilly on her beauty, feeling above temptation.
+
+"It's she, you've caught her, Mariano. She has been a great woman."
+
+Renovales appeared offended at this comment.
+
+"She is," he said with a sort of hostility. "She is still."
+
+Cotoner could not argue with his idol and he hastened to correct
+himself.
+
+"She is a charming woman, very attractive, yes sir, and very stylish.
+They say she is talented and cannot bear to let men who worship her
+suffer. She has certainly enjoyed life."
+
+Renovales began to bristle again, as if these words cut him.
+
+"Nonsense! lies, calumnies!" he said angrily. "Inventions of some young
+fellows who spread these disgraceful reports because they were
+rejected."
+
+Cotoner began to explain away what he had said. He did not know
+anything, he had heard it. The ladies at whose houses he dined spoke ill
+of the Alberca woman, but perhaps it was merely woman's gossip. There
+was a moment of silence and Renovales, as if he wanted to change the
+subject of conversation, turned to Soldevilla.
+
+"And you, aren't you painting any longer? I always find you here in
+working hours."
+
+He smiled somewhat knowingly as he said this, while the youth blushed
+and tried to make excuses. He was working hard, but every day he felt
+the need of dropping into his master's studio for a minute before he
+went to his own.
+
+It was a habit he had formed when he was a beginner, in that period, the
+best in his life, when he studied beside the great painter in a studio
+far less sumptuous than this.
+
+"And Milita? Did you see her?" continued Renovales with a good-natured
+smile that had not lost its playfulness. "Didn't she 'kid' you, for
+wearing that dazzling new tie?"
+
+Soldevilla smiled too. He had been in the dining-room with Doña
+Josephina and Milita and the latter had made fun of him as usual. But
+she did not mean anything; the master knew that Milita and he treated
+each other like brother and sister.
+
+More than once when she was a little tot and he a lad, he had acted as
+her horse, trotting around the old studio with the little scamp on his
+back, pulling his hair and pounding him with her tiny fists.
+
+"She's very cute," interrupted Cotoner. "She is the most attractive, the
+best girl I know."
+
+"And the unequaled López de Sosa?" asked the master, once more in a
+playful tone. "Didn't that 'chauffeur' that drives us crazy with his
+automobiles come to-day?"
+
+Soldevilla's smile disappeared. He grew pale and his eyes flashed
+spitefully. No, he had not seen the gentleman. According to the ladies,
+he was busy repairing an automobile that had broken down on the Pardo
+road. And as if the recollection of this friend of the family was trying
+for him and he wished to avoid any further allusions to him, he said
+"good-by" to the master. He was going to work; he must take advantage of
+the two hours of sunlight that were left. But before he went out he
+stopped to say another word in praise of the portrait of the countess.
+
+The two friends remained alone for a long while in silence. Renovales,
+buried in the shadow of that niche of Persian stuffs with which his
+divan was canopied, gazed at the picture.
+
+"Is she going to come to-day?" asked Cotoner, pointing to the canvas.
+
+Renovales shrugged his shoulders. To-day or the next day; it was
+impossible to do any serious work with that woman.
+
+He expected her that afternoon; but he would not feel surprised if she
+failed to keep her appointment. For nearly a month he had been unable to
+get in two days in succession. She was always engaged; she was president
+of societies for the education and emancipation of woman; she was
+constantly planning festivals and raffles; the activity of a tired woman
+of society, the fluttering of a wild bird that made her want to be
+everywhere at the same time, without the will to withdraw when once she
+was started in the current of feminine excitement. Suddenly the painter
+whose eyes were fixed on the portrait gave a cry of enthusiasm.
+
+"What a woman, Pepe! What a woman to paint!"
+
+His eyes seemed to lay bare the beauty that stood on the canvas in all
+its aristocratic grandeur. They strove to penetrate the mystery of that
+covering of lace and silk, to see the color and the lines of the form
+that was hardly revealed through the gown. This mental reconstruction
+was helped by the bare shoulders and the curve of her breasts that
+seemed to tremble at the edge of her dress, separated by a line of soft
+shadow.
+
+"That's just what I told your wife," said the Bohemian naively. "If you
+paint beautiful women, like the countess, it is merely for the sake of
+painting them and not that you would think of seeing in them anything
+more than a model."
+
+"Aha! So my wife has been talking to you about that!"
+
+Cotoner hastened to set his mind at ease, fearing his digestion might be
+disturbed. A mere trifle, nervousness on the part of poor Josephina, who
+saw the dark side of everything in her illness.
+
+She had referred during the luncheon to the Alberca woman and her
+portrait. She did not seem to be very fond of her, in spite of the fact
+that she had been her companion in boarding-school. She felt as other
+women did; the countess was an enemy, who inspired them with fear. But
+he had calmed her and finally succeeded in making her smile faintly.
+There was no use in talking about that any longer.
+
+But Renovales did not share his friend's optimism. He was well aware of
+his wife's state of mind; he understood now the motive that had made her
+flee from the table, to take refuge upstairs and to weep and long for
+death. She hated Concha as she did all the women who entered his studio.
+But this impression of sadness did not last very long in the painter; he
+was used to his wife's susceptibility. Besides, the consciousness of his
+faithfulness calmed him. His conscience was clean, and Josephina might
+believe what she would. It would only be one more injustice and he was
+resigned to endure his slavery without complaint.
+
+In order to forget his trouble, he began to talk about painting. The
+recollection of his conversation with Tekli enlivened him, for Tekli had
+been traveling all over Europe and was well acquainted with what the
+most famous masters were thinking and painting.
+
+"I'm getting old, Cotoner. Did you think I didn't know it? No, don't
+protest. I know that I am not old; forty-three years. I mean that I have
+lost my gait and cannot get started. It's a long time since I have done
+anything new; I always strike the same note. You know that some people,
+envious of my reputation are always throwing that defect in my face,
+like a vile insult."
+
+And the painter, with the selfishness of great artists who always think
+that they are neglected and the world begrudges them their glory,
+complained at the slavery that was imposed upon him by his good fortune.
+Making money! What a calamity for art! If the world were governed by
+his common sense, artists with talent would be supported by the State,
+which would generously provide for all their needs and whims. There
+would be no need of bothering about making a living. "Paint what you
+want to, and as you please." Then great things would be done and art
+would advance with giant strides, not constrained to debase itself by
+flattering public vulgarity and the ignorance of the rich. But now, to
+be a celebrated painter it was necessary to make money and this could
+not be done except by portraits, opening a shop, painting the first one
+that appeared, without the right of choice. Accursed painting! In
+writing, poverty was a merit. It stood for truth and honesty. But the
+painter must be rich, his talent was judged by his profits. The fame of
+his pictures was connected with the idea of thousands of dollars. When
+people talked about his work they always said, "He's making such and
+such a sum of money," and to keep up this wealth, the indispensable
+companion of his glory, he had to paint by the job, cringing before the
+vulgar throng that pays.
+
+Renovales walked excitedly around the portrait. Sometimes this laborer's
+work was tolerable, when he was painting beautiful women and men whose
+faces had the light of intelligence. But the vulgar politicians, the
+rich men that looked like porters, the stout dames with dead faces that
+he had to paint! When he let his love for truth overcome him and copied
+the model as he saw it, he won another enemy, who paid the bill
+grumblingly and went away to tell everyone that Renovales was not so
+great as people thought. To avoid this he lied in his painting, having
+recourse to the methods employed by other mediocre artists and this base
+procedure tormented his conscience, as if he were robbing his inferiors
+who deserved respect for the very reason that they were less endowed for
+artistic production than he.
+
+"Besides, that is not painting, the whole of painting. We think we are
+artists because we can reproduce a face, and the face is only a part of
+the body. We tremble with fear at the thought of the nude. We have
+forgotten it. We speak of it with respect and fear, as we would of
+something religious, worthy of worship, but something we never see close
+at hand. A large part of our talent is the talent of a dry-goods clerk.
+Cloth, nothing but cloth; garments. The body must be carefully wrapped
+up or we flee from it as from a danger."
+
+He ceased his nervous walking to and fro and stopped in front of the
+picture, fixing his gaze on it.
+
+"Imagine, Pepe," he said in an undertone, looking first instinctively
+toward the door, with that eternal fear of being heard by his wife in
+the midst of his artistic raptures. "Imagine, if that woman would
+undress; if I could paint her as she certainly is."
+
+Cotoner burst into laughter with a look like a knavish friar.
+
+"Wonderful, Mariano, a masterpiece. But she won't. I'm sure she would
+refuse to undress, though I admit she isn't always particular."
+
+Renovales shook his fists in protest.
+
+"And why won't they? What a rut! What vulgarity!"
+
+In his artistic selfishness he fancied that the world had been created
+without any other purpose than supporting painters, the rest of humanity
+was made to serve them as models, and he was shocked at this
+incomprehensible modesty. Ah, where could they find now the beauties of
+Greece, the calm models of sculptors, the pale Venetian ladies painted
+by Titian, the graceful Flemish women of Rubens, and the dainty,
+sprightly beauties of Goya? Beauty was eclipsed forever behind the veils
+of hypocrisy and false modesty. Women had one lover to-day, another
+to-morrow and still they blushed at recalling the woman of other times,
+far more pure than they, who did not hesitate to reveal to the public
+admiration the perfect work of God, the chastity of the nude.
+
+Renovales lay down on the divan again, and in the twilight he talked
+confidentially with Cotoner in a subdued voice, sometimes looking toward
+the door as if he feared being overheard.
+
+For some time he had been dreaming of a masterpiece. He had it in his
+imagination complete even to the least details. He saw it, closing his
+eyes, just at it would be, if he ever succeeded in painting it. It was
+Phryne, the famous beauty of Athens, appearing naked before the crowd of
+pilgrims on the beach of Delphi. All the suffering humanity of Greece
+walked on the shore of the sea toward the famous temple, seeking divine
+intervention for the relief of their ills, cripples with distorted
+limbs, repulsive lepers, men swollen with dropsy, pale, suffering women,
+trembling old men, youths disfigured in hideous expressions, withered
+arms like bare bones, shapeless elephant legs, all the phases of a
+perverted Nature, the piteous, desperate expressions of human pain. When
+they see on the beach Phryne, the glory of Greece, whose beauty was a
+national pride, the pilgrims stop and gaze upon her, turning their backs
+to the temple, that outlines its marble columns in the background of the
+parched mountains; and the beautiful woman, filled with pity by this
+procession of suffering, desires to brighten their sadness, to cast a
+handful of health and beauty among their wretched furrows, and tears off
+her veils, giving them the royal alms of her nakedness. The white,
+radiant body is outlined on the dark blue of the sea. The wind scatters
+her hair like golden serpents on her ivory shoulders; the waves that die
+at her feet, toss upon her stars of foam that make her skin tremble with
+the caress from her amber neck down to her rosy feet. The wet sand,
+polished and bright as a mirror, reproduces the sovereign nakedness,
+inverted and confused in serpentine lines that take on the shimmer of
+the rainbow as they disappear. And the pilgrims, on their knees, in the
+ecstasy of worship, stretch out their arms toward the mortal goddess,
+believing that Beauty and eternal Health have come to meet them.
+
+Renovales sat up and grasped Cotoner's arm as he described his future
+picture, and his friend nodded his approval gravely, impressed by the
+description.
+
+"Very fine! Sublime, Mariano!"
+
+But the master became dejected again after this flash of enthusiasm.
+
+The task was very difficult. He would have to go and take up quarters on
+the shore of the Mediterranean, on some secluded beach at Valencia or in
+Catalonia; he would have to build a cabin on the very edge of the sand
+where the water breaks with its bright reflections, and take woman after
+woman there, a hundred if it was necessary, in order to study the
+whiteness of their skin against the blue of the sea and sky, until he
+found the divine body of the Phryne he had dreamed.
+
+"Very difficult," murmured Renovales. "I tell you it is very difficult.
+There are so many obstacles to struggle against."
+
+Cotoner leaned forward with a confidential expression.
+
+"And besides, there's the mistress," he said in a quiet voice, looking
+at the door with a sort of fear. "I don't believe Josephina would be
+very much pleased with this picture and its pack of models."
+
+The master lowered his head.
+
+"If you only knew, Pepe! If you could see the life I lead every day!"
+
+"I know what it is," Cotoner hastened to say, "or rather, I can imagine.
+Don't tell me anything."
+
+And in his haste to avoid the sad confidences of his friend, there was a
+great deal of selfishness, the desire not to disturb his peaceful calm
+with other men's sorrows that excite only a distant interest.
+
+Renovales spoke after a long silence. He often wondered whether an
+artist ought to be married or single. Other men, of weak, hesitating
+character needed the support of a comrade, the atmosphere of a family.
+
+He recalled with relish the first few months of his married life; but
+since then it had weighed on him like a chain. He did not deny the
+existence of love; he needed the sweet company of a woman in order to
+live, but with intermissions, without the endless imprisonment of common
+life. Artists like himself ought to be free, he was sure of it.
+
+"Oh, Pepe, if I had only stayed like you, master of my time and my work,
+without having to think what my family will say if they see me painting
+this or that, what great things I should have done!"
+
+The old man, who had failed in all his tasks, was going to say something
+when the door of the studio opened and Renovales' servant came in, a
+little man with fat red cheeks and a high voice which, according to
+Cotoner, sounded like the messenger of a monastery.
+
+"The countess."
+
+Cotoner jumped out of his armchair. Those models didn't like to see
+people in the studio. How could he get out? Renovales helped him to find
+his hat, coat and cane, which with his usual carelessness he had left in
+different corners of the studio.
+
+The master pushed him out of a door that led into the garden. Then, when
+he was alone, he ran to an old Venetian mirror, and looked at himself
+for a moment in its deep, bluish surface, smoothing his curly gray hair
+with his fingers.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+She came in with a great rustling of silks and laces, her least
+step accompanied by the _frou-frou_ of her skirts, scattering various
+perfumes, like the breath of an exotic garden.
+
+"Good afternoon, _mon cher maître_."
+
+As she looked at him through her tortoise-shell lorgnette, hanging from
+a gold chain, the gray amber of her eyes took on an insolent stare
+through the glasses, a strange expression, half caressing, half mocking.
+
+He must pardon her for being so late. She was sorry for her lack of
+attention, but she was the busiest woman in Madrid. The things she had
+done since luncheon! Signing and examining papers with the secretary of
+the "Women's League," a conference with the carpenter and the foreman
+(two rough fellows who fairly devoured her with their eyes), who had
+charge of putting up the booths for the great fair for the benefit of
+destitute working women; a call on the president of the Cabinet, a
+somewhat dissolute old gentleman, in spite of his gravity, who received
+her with the airs of an old-fashioned gallant, kissing her hand, as they
+used to in a minuet.
+
+"We have lost the afternoon, haven't we, _maître?_ There's hardly sun
+enough to work by now. Besides, I didn't bring my maid to help me."
+
+She pointed with her lorgnette to the door of an alcove that served as a
+dressing-room for the models and where she kept the evening gown and the
+flame-colored cloak in which he was painting her.
+
+Renovales, after looking furtively at the entrance of the studio,
+assumed an arrogant air of swaggering gallantry, such as he used to have
+in his youth in Rome, free and obstreperous.
+
+"You needn't give up on that account. If you will let me, I'll act as
+maid for you."
+
+The countess began to laugh loudly, throwing back her head and
+shoulders, showing her white throat that shook with merriment.
+
+"Oh, what a good joke! And how daring the master is getting. You don't
+know anything about such things, Renovales. All you can do is paint. You
+are not in practice."
+
+And in her accent of subtle irony, there was something like pity for the
+artist, removed from mundane things, whose conjugal virtue everyone
+knew. This seemed to offend him for he spoke to the countess very
+sharply as he picked up the palette and prepared the colors. There was
+no need of changing her dress; he would make use of what little daylight
+remained to work on the head.
+
+Concha took off her hat and then, before the same Venetian mirror in
+which the painter had looked at himself, began to touch up her hair. Her
+arms curved around her golden head, while Renovales contemplated the
+grace of her back, seeing at the same time her face and breast in the
+glass. She hummed as she arranged her hair, with her eyes fixed on their
+own reflection, not letting anything distract her in this important
+operation.
+
+That brilliant, striking golden hair was probably bleached. The painter
+was sure of it, but it did not seem less beautiful to him on that
+account. The beauties of Venice in the olden times used to dye their
+hair.
+
+The countess sat down in an armchair, a short distance from the easel.
+She felt tired and as long as he was not going to paint anything but her
+face, he would not be so cruel as to make her stand, as he did on days
+of real sittings. Renovales answered with monosyllables and shrugs of
+his shoulders. That was all right--for what they were going to do. An
+afternoon lost. He would limit himself to working on her hair and her
+forehead. She might take it easy, looking anywhere she wanted to.
+
+The master did not feel any desire to work either. A dull anger
+disturbed him; he was irritated by the ironical accent of the countess
+who saw in him a man different from other men, a strange being who was
+incapable of acting like the insipid young men who formed her court and
+many of whom, according to common gossip, were her lovers. A strange
+woman, provoking and cold! He felt like falling on her, in his rage at
+her offence, and beating her with the same scorn that he would a low
+woman, to make her feel his manly superiority.
+
+Of all the ladies whose pictures he had painted, none had disturbed his
+artistic calm as she had. He felt attracted by her mad jesting, by her
+almost childish levity, and at the same time he hated her for the
+pitying air with which she treated him. For her he was a good fellow,
+but very commonplace, who by some rare caprice of Nature possessed the
+gift of painting well.
+
+Renovales returned this scorn by insulting her mentally. That Countess
+of Alberca was a fine one. No wonder people talked about her. Perhaps
+when she appeared in his studio, always in a hurry and out of breath,
+she came from a private interview with some one of those young bloods
+that hung around her, attracted by her still fresh, alluring maturity.
+
+But if Concha spoke to him with her easy freedom, telling him of the
+sadness she said she felt and allowing herself to confide in him, as if
+they were united by a long standing friendship, that was enough to make
+the master change his thoughts immediately. She was a superior woman of
+ideals, condemned to live in a depressing aristocratic atmosphere. All
+the gossip about her was a calumny, a lie forged by envious people. She
+ought to be the companion of a superior man, of an artist.
+
+Renovales knew her history; he was proud of the friendly confidence she
+had had in him. She was the only daughter of a distinguished gentleman,
+a solemn jurist, and a violent Conservative, a minister in the most
+reactionary cabinets of the reign of Isabel II. She had been educated at
+the same school as Josephina, who in spite of the fact that Concha was
+four years her senior, retained a vivid recollection of her lively
+companion. "For mischief and deviltry you can't beat Conchita Salazar."
+It was thus that Renovales heard her name for the first time. Then when
+the artist and his wife had moved from Venice to Madrid, he learned that
+she had changed her name to that of the Countess of Alberca by marrying
+a man who might have been her father.
+
+He was an old courtier who performed his duties as a grandee of Spain
+with great conscientiousness, proud of his slavery to the royal family.
+His ambition was to belong to all the honorable orders of Europe and as
+soon as he was named to one of them, he had his picture painted, covered
+with scarfs and crosses, wearing the uniform of one of the traditional
+military Orders. His wife laughed to see him, so little, bald and
+solemn, with high boots, a dangling sword, his breast covered with
+trinkets, a white plumed helmet resting in his lap.
+
+During the life of isolation and privation with which Renovales
+struggled so courageously, the papers brought to the artist's wretched
+house the echoes of the triumphs of the "fair Countess of Alberca." Her
+name appeared in the first line of every account of an aristocratic
+function. Besides, they called her "enlightened," and talked about her
+literary culture, her classic education which she owed to her
+"illustrious father," now dead. And with this public news there reached
+the artist on the whispering wings of Madrid gossip other tales that
+represented the Countess of Alberca as consoling herself merrily for the
+mistake she had made in marrying an old man.
+
+At Court, they had taken her name from the lists, as a result of this
+reputation. Her husband took part at all the royal functions, for he did
+not have a chance every day to show off his load of honorary hardware,
+but she stayed at home, loathing these ceremonious affairs. Renovales
+had often heard her declare, dressed luxuriously and wearing costly
+jewels in her ears and on her breast, that she laughed at his set, that
+she was on the inside, she was an anarchist! And he laughed as he heard
+her, just as all men laughed at what they called the "ways" of the
+Alberca woman.
+
+When Renovales won success and, as a famous master, returned to those
+drawing rooms through which he had passed in his youth, he felt the
+attraction of the countess who in her character as a "woman of
+intellect," insisted on gathering celebrated men about her. Josephina
+did not accompany him in this return to society. She felt ill; contact
+with the same people in the same places tired her; she lacked the
+strength to undertake even the trips her doctors urged upon her.
+
+The countess enrolled the painter in her following, appearing offended
+when he failed to present himself at her house on the afternoons on
+which she received her friends. What ingratitude to show to such a
+fervent admirer! How she liked to exhibit him before her friends, as if
+he were a new jewel! "The painter Renovales, the famous master."
+
+At one of these afternoon receptions, the count spoke to Renovales with
+the serious air of a man who is crushed beneath his worldly honors.
+
+"Concha wants a portrait done by you, and I like to please her in every
+way. You can say when to begin. She is afraid to propose it to you and
+has commissioned me to do it. I know that your work is better than that
+of other painters. Paint her well, so that she may be pleased."
+
+And noticing that Renovales seemed rather offended at his patronizing
+familiarity, he added as if he were doing him another favor.
+
+"If you have success with Concha, you may paint my picture afterward. I
+am only waiting for the Grand Chrysanthemum of Japan. At the Government
+offices they tell me the titles will come one of these days."
+
+Renovales began the countess's portrait. The task was prolonged by that
+rattle-brained woman who always came late, alleging that she had been
+busy. Many days the artist did not take a stroke with his brush; they
+spent the time chatting. At other times the master listened in silence
+while she with her ceaseless volubility made fun of her friends and
+related their secret defects, their most intimate habits, their
+mysterious amours, with a kind of relish, as if all women were her
+enemies. In the midst of one of these confidential talks, she stopped
+and said with a shy expression and an ironical accent:
+
+"But I am probably shocking you, Mariano. You, who are a good husband, a
+staunch family-man."
+
+Renovales felt tempted to choke her. She was making fun of him; she
+looked on him as a man different from the rest of men, a sort of monk of
+painting. Eager to wound her, to return the blow, he interrupted once
+brutally in the midst of her merciless gossip.
+
+"Well, they talk about you, too, Concha. They say things that wouldn't
+be very pleasing to the count."
+
+He expected an outburst of anger, a protest, and all that resounded in
+the silence of the studio was a merry, reckless laugh that lasted a
+long time, stopping occasionally, only to begin again. Then she grew
+pensive, with the gentle sadness of women who are "misunderstood." She
+was very unhappy. She could tell him everything because he was a good
+friend. She had married when she was still a child; a terrible mistake.
+There was something else in the world besides the glare of fortune, the
+splendor of luxury and that count's coronet, which had stirred her
+school-girl's mind.
+
+"We have the right to a little love, and if not love, to a little joy.
+Don't you think so, Mariano?"
+
+Of course he thought so. And he declared it in such a way, looking at
+Concha with alarming eyes, that she finally laughed at his frankness and
+threatened him with her finger.
+
+"Take care, master. Don't forget that Josephina is my friend and if you
+go astray, I'll tell her everything."
+
+Renovales was irritated at her disposition, always restless and
+capricious as a bird's, quite as likely to sit down beside him in warm
+intimacy as to flit away with tormenting banter.
+
+Sometimes she was aggressive, teasing the artist from her very first
+words, as had just happened that afternoon.
+
+They were silent for a long time--he, painting with an absent-minded
+air, she watching the movement of the brush, buried in an armchair in
+the sweet calm of rest.
+
+But the Alberca woman was incapable of remaining silent long. Little by
+little her usual chatter began, paying no attention to the painter's
+silence, talking to relieve the convent-like stillness of the studio
+with her words and laughter.
+
+The painter heard the story of her labors as president of the "Women's
+League," of the great things she meant to do in the holy undertaking for
+the emancipation of the sex. And, in passing, led on by her desire of
+ridiculing all women, she gaily made sport of her co-workers in the
+great project; unknown literary women, school teachers, whose lives were
+embittered by their ugliness, painters of flowers and doves, a throng of
+poor women with extravagant hats and clothes that looked as though they
+were hung on a bean-pole; feminine Bohemians, rebellious and rabid
+against their lot, who were proud to have her as their leader and who
+made it a point to call her "Countess" in sonorous tones at every other
+word, in order to flatter themselves with the distinction of this
+friendship. The Alberca woman was greatly amused at her following of
+admirers; she laughed at their intolerance and their proposals.
+
+"Yes, I know what it is," said Renovales breaking his long silence. "You
+want to annihilate us, to reign over man, whom you hate."
+
+The countess laughed at the recollection of the fierce feminism of some
+of her acolytes. As most of them were homely, they hated feminine beauty
+as a sign of weakness. They wanted the woman of the future to be without
+hips, without breasts, straight, bony, muscular, fitted for all sorts of
+manual labor, free from the slavery of love and reproduction. "Down with
+feminine fat!"
+
+"What a frightful idea! Don't you think so, Mariano?" she continued.
+"Woman, straight in front and straight behind, with her hair cut short
+and her hands hardened, competing with men in all sorts of struggles!
+And they call that emancipation! I know what men are; if they saw us
+looking like that, in a few days they would be beating us."
+
+No, she was not one of them. She wanted to see a woman triumph, but by
+increasing still more her charm and her fascination. If they took away
+her beauty what would she have left? She wanted her to be man's equal in
+intelligence, his superior by the magic of her beauty.
+
+"I don't hate men, Mariano, I am very much a woman, and I like them.
+What's the use of denying it?"
+
+"I know it, Concha, I know it," said the painter, with a malicious
+meaning.
+
+"What do you know? Lies, gossip that people tell about me because I am
+not a hypocrite and am not always wearing a gloomy expression."
+
+And led on by that desire for sympathy that all women of questionable
+reputation experience, she spoke once more of her unpleasant situation.
+Renovales knew the count, a good man in spite of his hobbies, who
+thought of nothing but his honorary trinkets. She did everything for
+him, watched out for his comfort, but he was nothing to her. She lacked
+the most important thing--heart-love.
+
+As she spoke she looked up, with a longing idealism that would have made
+anyone but Renovales smile.
+
+"In this situation," she said slowly, looking into space, "it isn't
+strange that a woman seeks happiness where she can find it. But I am
+very unhappy, Mariano; I don't know what love is. I have never loved."
+
+Ah, she would have been happy, if she had married a man who was her
+superior. To be the companion of a great artist, of a scholar, would
+have meant happiness for her. The men who gathered around her in her
+drawing-rooms were younger and stronger than the poor count, but
+mentally they were even weaker than he. There was no such thing as
+virtue in the world, she admitted that; she did not dare to lie to a
+friend like the painter. She had had her diversions, her whims, just as
+many other women who passed as impregnable models of virtue, but she
+always came out of these misdoings with a feeling of disenchantment and
+disgust. She knew that love was a reality for other women, but she had
+never succeeded in finding it.
+
+Renovales had stopped painting. The sunlight no longer came in through
+the wide window. The panes took on a violet opaqueness. Twilight filled
+the studio, and in the shadows there shone dimly like dying sparks, here
+the corner of a picture frame, beyond the old gold of an embroidered
+banner, in the corners the pummel of a sword, the pearl inlay of a
+cabinet.
+
+The painter sat down beside the countess, sinking into the perfumed
+atmosphere which surrounded her with a sort of nimbus of keen
+voluptuousness.
+
+He, too, was unhappy. He said it sincerely, believing honestly in the
+lady's melancholy despair. Something was lacking in his life; he was
+alone in the world. And as he saw an expression of surprise on Concha's
+face, he pounded his chest energetically.
+
+Yes, alone. He knew what she was going to say. He had his wife, his
+daughter. About Milita he did not want to talk; he worshiped her; she
+was his joy. When he felt tired out with work, it gave him a sweet sense
+of rest to put his arms around her neck. But he was still too young to
+be satisfied with this joy of a father's love. He longed for something
+more and he could not find it in the companion of his life, always ill,
+with her nerves constantly on edge. Besides, she did not understand him.
+She never would understand him; she was a burden who was crushing his
+talent.
+
+Their union was based merely on friendship, on mutual consideration for
+the suffering they had undergone together. He, too, had been deceived in
+taking for love what was only an impulse of youthful attraction. He
+needed a true passion; to live close to a soul that was akin to his, to
+love a woman who was his superior, who could understand him and
+encourage him in his bold projects, who could sacrifice her commonplace
+prejudices to the demands of art.
+
+He spoke vehemently, with his eyes fixed on Concha's eyes that shone
+with light from the window.
+
+But Renovales was interrupted by a cruel, ironical laugh, while the
+countess pushed back her chair, as if to avoid the artist who slowly
+leaned forward toward her.
+
+"Look out, you're slipping, Mariano! I see it coming. A little more and
+you would have made me a confession. Heavens! These men! You can't talk
+to them like a good friend, show them any confidence without their
+beginning to talk love on the spot. If I would let you, in less than a
+minute you would tell me that I am your ideal, that you worship me."
+
+Renovales, who had moved away from her, recovering his sternness, felt
+cut by that mocking laugh and said in a quiet tone:
+
+"And what if it were true? What if I loved you?"
+
+The laugh of the countess rang out again, but forced, false, with a tone
+that seemed to tear the artist's breast.
+
+"Just what I expected! The confession I spoke of! That's the third one
+I've received to-day. But isn't it possible to talk with a man of
+anything but love?"
+
+She was already on her feet, looking around for her hat, for she could
+not remember where she had left it.
+
+"I'm going, _cher maître_. It isn't safe to stay here. I'll try to come
+earlier next time so that the twilight won't catch us. It's a
+treacherous hour; the moment of the greatest follies."
+
+The painter objected to her leaving. Her carriage had not yet come. She
+could wait a few minutes longer. He promised to be quiet, not to talk to
+her, as long as it seemed to displease her.
+
+The countess remained, but she would not sit down in the chair. She
+walked around the studio for a few moments and finally opened the organ
+that stood near the window.
+
+"Let's have a little music; that will quiet us. You, Mariano, sit still
+as a mouse in your chair and don't come near me. Be a good boy now."
+
+Her fingers rested on the keys; her feet moved the pedals and the
+_Largo_ of Handel, grave, mystic, dreamy, swelled softly through the
+studio. The melody filled the wide room, already wrapped in shadows, it
+made its way through the tapestries, prolonging its winged whisper
+through the other two studios, as though it were the song of an organ
+played by invisible hands in a deserted cathedral at the mysterious hour
+of dusk.
+
+Concha felt stirred with feminine sentimentality, that superficial,
+whimsical, sensitiveness that made her friends look on her as a great
+artist. The music filled her with tenderness; she strove to keep back
+the tears that came to her eyes,--why, she could not tell.
+
+Suddenly she stopped playing and looked around anxiously. The painter
+was behind her, she fancied she felt his breath on her neck. She wanted
+to protest, to make him draw back with one of her cruel laughs, but she
+could not.
+
+"Mariano," she murmured, "go sit down, be a good boy and mind me. If you
+don't I'll be cross."
+
+But she did not move; after turning half way around on the stool, she
+remained facing the window with one elbow resting on the keys.
+
+They were silent for a long time; she in this position, he watching her
+face that now was only a white spot in the deepening shadow.
+
+The panes of the window took on a bluish opaqueness. The branches of the
+garden cut them like sinuous, shifting lines of ink. In the deep calm of
+the studio the creaking of the furniture could be heard, that breathing
+of wood, of dust, of objects in the silence and shadow.
+
+Both of them seem to be captivated by the mystery of the hour, as if the
+death of day acted as an anæsthetic on their minds. They felt lulled in
+a vague, sweet dream.
+
+She trembled with pleasure.
+
+"Mariano, go away," she said slowly, as if it cost her an effort. "This
+is so pleasant, I feel as if I were in a bath, a bath that penetrates to
+my very soul. But it isn't right. Turn on the lights, master. Light!
+Light! This isn't proper."
+
+Mariano did not listen to her. He had bent over her, taking her hand
+that was cold, unfeeling, as if it did not notice the pressure of his.
+
+Then, with a sudden start, he kissed it, almost bit it.
+
+The countess seemed to awake and stood up, proudly, angrily.
+
+"That's childish, Mariano. It isn't fair."
+
+But in a moment she laughed with her cruel laugh, as if she pitied the
+confusion that Renovales showed when he saw her anger. "You are
+pardoned, master. A kiss on the hand means nothing. It is the
+conventional thing. Many men kiss my hand."
+
+And this indifference was a bitter torment for the artist, who
+considered that his kiss was a sign of possession.
+
+The countess continued to search in the darkness, repeating in an
+irritated voice:
+
+"Light, turn on the light. Where in the world is the button?"
+
+The light was turned on without Mariano's moving, before she found the
+button she was looking for. Three clusters of electric lights flashed
+out on the ceiling of the studio, and their crowns of white needles,
+brought out of the shadows the golden picture frames, the brilliant
+tapestries, the shining arms, the showy furniture and the bright-colored
+paintings.
+
+They both blinked, blinded by the sudden brightness.
+
+"Good evening," said a honeyed voice from the doorway.
+
+"Josephina!"
+
+The countess ran toward her, embracing her effusively, kissing her
+bright red, emaciated cheeks.
+
+"How dark you were," continued Josephina with a smile that Renovales
+knew well.
+
+Concha fairly stunned her with her flow of chatter. The illustrious
+master had refused to light up, he liked the twilight. An artist's whim!
+They had been talking about their dear Josephina, while she was waiting
+for her carriage to come. And as she said this, she kept kissing the
+little woman, drawing back a little to look at her better, repeating
+impetuously:
+
+"My, how pretty you are to-day. You look better than you did three days
+ago."
+
+Josephina continued to smile. She thanked her. Her carriage was waiting
+at the door. The servant had told her when she came downstairs,
+attracted by the distant sound of the organ.
+
+The countess seemed to be in a hurry to leave. She suddenly remembered a
+host of things she had to do, she enumerated the people who were waiting
+for her at home. Josephina helped her to put on her hat and veil and
+even then the countess gave her several good-by kisses through the veil.
+
+"Good-by, _ma chère_. Good-by, _mignonne_. Do you remember our school
+days? How happy we were there! Good-by, _maître_."
+
+She stopped at the door to kiss Josephina once more.
+
+And finally, before she disappeared, she exclaimed in the querulous tone
+of a victim who wants sympathy:
+
+"I envy you, _chèrie_. You, at least, are happy. You have found a
+husband who worships you. Master, take lots of care of her. Be good to
+her so that she may get well and pretty. Take care of her or we shall
+quarrel."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Renovales had finished reading the evening papers in bed as was his
+custom, and before putting out the light he looked at his wife.
+
+She was awake. Above the fold of the sheet he saw her eyes, unusually
+wide open, fixed on him with a hostile stare, and the little tails of
+her hair, that stuck out under the lace of her night-cap straight and
+sedate.
+
+"Aren't you asleep?" the painter asked in an affectionate tone, in which
+there was some anxiety.
+
+"No."
+
+And after this hard monosyllable, she turned over in the bed with her
+back to him.
+
+Renovales remained in the darkness, with his eyes open, somewhat
+disturbed, almost afraid of that body, hidden under the same sheet,
+lying a short distance from him, which avoided touching him, shrinking
+with manifest repulsion.
+
+Poor little girl! Renovales' better nature felt tormented with a painful
+remorse. His conscience was a cruel beast that had awakened, angry and
+implacable, tearing him with scornful teeth. The events of the afternoon
+meant nothing, a moment of thoughtlessness, of weakness. Surely the
+countess would not remember it and he, for his part, was determined not
+to slip again.
+
+A pretty situation for a father of a family, for a man whose youth was
+past, compromising himself in a love affair, getting melancholy in the
+twilight, kissing a white hand like an enamored troubadour! Good God!
+How his friends would have laughed to see him in that posture! He must
+purge himself of that romanticism which sometimes mastered him. Every
+man must follow his fate, accepting life as he found it. He was born to
+be virtuous, he must put up with the relative peace of his domestic
+life, must accept its limited pleasures as a compensation for the
+suffering his wife's illness caused him. He would be content with the
+feasts of his thought, with the revels in beauty at the banquets served
+by his fancy. He would keep his flesh faithful though it amounted to
+perpetual privation. Poor Josephina! His remorse at a moment of weakness
+which he considered a crime, impelled him to draw closer to her, as if
+he sought in her warmth and contact a mute forgiveness.
+
+Her body, burning with a slow fever, drew away as it felt his touch, it
+shriveled like those timid molluscs that shrink and hide at the least
+touch. She was awake. He could not hear her breathing; she seemed dead
+in the profound darkness, but he fancied her with her eyes open, a scowl
+on her forehead and he felt the fear of a man who has a presentiment of
+danger in the mystery of the darkness.
+
+Renovales too remained motionless, taking care not to touch again that
+form which silently repelled him. The sincerity of his repentance
+brought him a sort of consolation. Never again would he forget his wife,
+his daughter, his respectability.
+
+He would give up forever the longings of youth, that recklessness, that
+thirst for enjoying all the pleasures of life. His lot was cast; he
+would continue to be what he always had been. He would paint portraits
+and everything that was given to him as a commission; he would please
+the public; he would make more money, he would adapt his art to meet his
+wife's jealous demands, that she might live in peace; he would scoff at
+that phantom of human ambition which men call glory. Glory! A lottery,
+where the only chance for a prize depended on the tastes of people still
+to be born! Who knew what the artistic inclinations of the future would
+be? Perhaps it would appreciate what he was now producing with such
+loathing; perhaps it would laugh scornfully at what he wanted to paint.
+The only thing of importance was to live in peace, as long as he could
+be surrounded by happiness. His daughter would marry. Perhaps her
+husband would be his favorite pupil, that Soldevilla, so polite, so
+courteous, who was mad over the mischievous Milita. If it was not he, it
+would be López de Sosa, a crazy fellow, in love with his automobiles,
+who pleased Josephina more than the pupil because he had not committed
+the sin of showing talent and devoting himself to painting. He would
+have grandchildren, his beard would grow white, he would have the
+majesty of an Eternal Father and Josephina, cared for by him, restored
+to health by an atmosphere of affection, would grow old too, freed from
+her nervous troubles.
+
+The painter felt allured by this picture of patriarchal happiness. He
+would go out of the world without having tasted the best fruits which
+life offers, but still with the peace of a soul that does not know the
+great heat of passion.
+
+Lulled by these illusions, the artist was sinking into sleep. He saw in
+the darkness, the image of his calm old age, with rosy wrinkles and
+silvery hair, at his side a sprightly little old lady, healthy and
+attractive, with wavy hair, and around them a group of children, many
+children, some of them with their fingers in their noses, others rolling
+on their backs on the floor, like playful kittens, the older ones with
+pencils in their hands, making caricatures of the old couple and all
+shouting in a chorus of loving cries: "Grandpa, dear! Pretty grandma!"
+
+In his sleepy fancy, the picture grew indistinct and was blotted out. He
+no longer saw the figures, but the loving cry continued to sound in his
+ears, dying away in the distance.
+
+Then it began to increase again, drew slowly nearer, but it was a
+complaint, a howl like that of the victim that feels the sacrificer's
+knife at its throat.
+
+The artist, terrified by this moan, thought that some dark animal, some
+monster of the night was tossing beside him, brushing him with its
+tentacles, pushing him with the bony points of its joints.
+
+He awoke and with his brain still cloudy with sleep, the first sensation
+he experienced was a tremble of fear and surprise, reaching from his
+head to his feet. The invisible monster was beside him, dying, kicking
+violently, sticking him with its angular body. The howl tore the
+darkness like a death rattle.
+
+Renovales, aroused by his fear, awoke completely. That cry came from
+Josephina. His wife was tossing about in the bed, shrieking while she
+gasped for breath.
+
+The electric button snapped and the white, hard light of the lamp showed
+the little woman in the disorder of her nervous outbreak; her weak limbs
+painfully convulsed, her eyes, staring, dull with an uncanny vacancy;
+her mouth contracted, dripping with foam.
+
+The husband, dazed at this awakening, tried to take her in his arms, to
+hold her gently against him, as if his warmth might restore her calm.
+
+"Let me--alone," she cried brokenly. "Let go of me. I hate you!"
+
+And though she asked him to let go of her, she was the one who clung to
+him, digging her fingers into his throat, as if she wanted to strangle
+him. Renovates, insensible to this clutch which made little impression
+on his strong neck, murmured with sad kindness:
+
+"Squeeze! Don't be afraid of hurting me. Relieve your feelings!"
+
+Her hands, tired out with this useless pressure on that muscular flesh,
+relaxed their grasp with a sort of dejection. The outbreak lasted for
+some time, but tears came and she lay exhausted, inert, without any
+other signs of life than the heaving of her breast and a constant stream
+of tears.
+
+Renovales had jumped out of bed, moving about the room in his night
+clothing, searching on all sides, without knowing what he was looking
+for, murmuring loving words to calm his wife.
+
+She stopped crying, struggling to enunciate each syllable between her
+sobs. She spoke with her head buried in her arms. The painter stopped to
+listen to her, astounded at the coarse words that came from her lips, as
+if the grief that stirred her soul had set afloat all the shameful,
+filthy words she had heard in the streets that were hidden in the depth
+of her memory.
+
+"The ----!" (And here she uttered the classic word, naturally, as if she
+had spoken thus all her life.) "The shameless woman! The ----!"
+
+And she continued to volley a string of interjections which shocked her
+husband to hear them coming from those lips.
+
+"But whom are you talking about? Who is it?"
+
+She, as if she were only waiting for his question, sat up in bed, got
+onto her knees, looking at him fixedly, shaking her head on her delicate
+neck, so that the short, straight locks of hair whirled around it.
+
+"Whom do you suppose? The Alberca woman. That peacock! Look surprised!
+You don't know what I mean! Poor thing!"
+
+Renovales expected this, but when he heard it, he assumed an injured
+expression, fortified by his determination to reform and by the
+certainty that he was telling the truth. He raised his hand to his heart
+in a tragic attitude, throwing back his shock of hair, not noticing the
+absurdity of his appearance that was reflected in the bedroom mirror.
+
+"Josephina, I swear by all that I love most in the world that your
+suspicions are not true. I have had nothing to do with Concha. I swear
+it by our daughter!"
+
+The little woman became more irritated.
+
+"Don't swear, don't lie, don't name my daughter. You deceiver! You
+hypocrite! You are all alike!"
+
+Did he think she was a fool? She knew everything that was going on
+around her. He was a rake, a false husband, she had discovered it a few
+months after their marriage; a Bohemian without any other education than
+the low associations of his class. And the woman was as bad; the worst
+in Madrid. There was a reason why people laughed at the count
+everywhere. Mariano and Concha understood each other; birds of a
+feather; they made fun of her in her own house, in the dark of the
+studio.
+
+"She is your mistress," she said with cold anger. "Come now, admit it.
+Repeat all those shameless things about the rights of love and joy that
+you talk about to your friends in the studio, those infamous hypocrisies
+to justify your scorn for the family, for marriage, for everything. Have
+the courage of your convictions."
+
+But Renovales, overwhelmed by this fierce outpouring of words that fell
+on him like a rain of blows, could only repeat, with his hand on his
+heart and the expression of noble resignation of a man who suffers an
+injustice:
+
+"I am innocent. I swear it. Your suspicions are absolutely groundless."
+
+And walking around to the other side of the bed, he tried again to take
+Josephina in his arms, thinking he could calm her, now that she seemed
+less furious and that her angry words were broken by tears.
+
+It was a useless effort. The delicate form slipped out of his hands,
+repelling them with a feeling of horror and repugnance.
+
+"Let me alone. Don't touch me. I loathe you."
+
+Her husband was mistaken if he thought that she was Concha's enemy.
+Pshaw! She knew what women were. She even admitted (since he was so
+insistent in his protestations of innocence) that there was nothing
+between them. But if so, it was due solely to Concha--she had plenty of
+admirers and, besides, her old time friendship would impel her not to
+embitter Josephina's life. Concha was the one who had resisted and not
+he.
+
+"I know you. You know that I can guess your thoughts, that I read in
+your face. You are faithful because you are a coward, because you have
+lacked an opportunity. But your mind is loaded with foul ideas; I detest
+your spirit."
+
+And before he could protest, his wife attacked him; anew, pouring out in
+one breath all the observations she had made, weighing his words and
+deeds with the subtlety of a diseased imagination.
+
+She threw in his face the expression of rapture in his eyes when he saw
+beautiful women sit down before his easel to have their portraits
+painted; his praise of the throat of one, the shoulders of another; the
+almost religious unction with which he examined the photographs and
+engravings of naked beauties, painted by other artists whom he would
+like to imitate in his licentious impulses.
+
+"If I should leave you! If I should disappear! Your studio would be a
+brothel, no decent person could enter it; you would always have some
+woman stripped in there, painting some disgraceful picture of her."
+
+And in the tremble of her irritated voice there was revealed the anger,
+the bitter disappointment she had experienced in the constant contact
+with this cult of beauty, that paid no attention to her, who was aged
+before her time, sickly, with the ugliness of physical misery, whom each
+one of these enthusiastic homages wounded like a reproach, marking the
+abyss between her sad condition and the ideal that filled the mind of
+her husband.
+
+"Do you think I don't know what you are thinking about. I laugh at your
+fidelity. A lie! Hypocrisy! As you get older, a mad desire is mastering
+you. If you could, if you had the courage, you would run after these
+creatures of beautiful flesh that you praise so highly. You are
+commonplace. There's nothing in you but coarseness and materialism.
+Form! Flesh! And they call that artistic? I'd have done better to marry
+a shoemaker, one of those honest, simple men that takes his poor little
+wife to dinner in a restaurant on Sunday and worships her, not knowing
+any other."
+
+Renovales began to feel irritated at this attack that was no longer
+based on his actions but on his thoughts. That was worse than the
+Inquisition. She had spied on him constantly; always on the watch, she
+picked up his least words and expressions, she penetrated his thoughts,
+making his inclinations and enthusiasms a subject for jealousy.
+
+"Stop, Josephina. That's despicable. I won't be able to think, to
+produce. You spy on me and pursue me even in my art."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders scornfully. His art! She scoffed at it.
+
+And she began again to insult painting, repenting that she had joined
+her lot to an artist's. Men like him ought not to marry respectable
+women, what people call "homebodies." Their fate was to remain single or
+to join with unscrupulous women who were in love with their own form and
+were capable of exhibiting it in the street, taking pride in their
+nakedness.
+
+"I used to love you; did you know it?" she said coldly. "I used to love
+you, but I no longer love you. What's the use? I know that even if you
+swore to me on your knees, you would never be faithful to me. You might
+be tied to my apron strings but your thoughts would go wandering off to
+caress those beauties you worship. You've got a perfect harem in your
+head. I think I am living alone with you and when I look at you, the
+house is peopled with women that surround me, that fill everything and
+mock at me; all fair, like children of the devil all naked, like
+temptations. Let me alone, Mariano, don't come near me. I don't want to
+see you. Put out the light."
+
+And seeing that the artist did not obey her command, she pressed the
+button herself. The cracking of her bones could be heard as she wrapped
+herself up in the bed-clothes.
+
+Renovales was left in utter darkness, and feeling his way, he got into
+bed too. He no longer implored, he remained silent, angry. The tender
+compassion that made him put up with his wife's nervous attacks had
+disappeared. What more did she expect of him? How far was it going to
+go? He lived the life of a recluse, restraining his healthy passion,
+keeping a chaste fidelity out of habit and respect, seeking an outlet in
+the ardent vagaries of his fancy, and even that was a crime! With the
+acumen of a sick woman, she saw within him, divining his ideas,
+following their course, tearing off the veil behind which he concealed
+those feasts of fancy with which he passed his solitary hours. This
+persecution reached even his brain. He could not patiently endure the
+jealousy of that woman who was embittered by the loss of her youthful
+freshness.
+
+She began her weeping again in the darkness. She sobbed convulsively,
+tossing the clothes with the heaving of her breast.
+
+His anger made him insensible and hard.
+
+"Groan, you poor wretch," he thought with a sort of relish. "Weep till
+you ruin yourself. I won't be the one to say a word."
+
+Josephina, tired out by his silence, interjected words amid her sobs.
+People made fun of her. She was a constant laughing-stock. How his
+friends who hung on his words, and the ladies who visited him in his
+studio, laughed when they heard him enthusiastically praising beauty in
+the presence of his sickly, broken-down wife! What did she amount to in
+that house, that terrible pantheon, that home of sorrow? A poor
+housekeeper who watched out for the artist's comforts. And he thought
+that he was fulfilling his duty by not keeping a mistress, by staying at
+home, but still abusing her with his words that made her an object of
+derision. If her mother were only alive! If her brothers were not so
+selfish, wandering about the world from embassy to embassy, satisfied
+with life, paying no attention to her letters filled with complaints,
+thinking she was insane because she was not contented with a
+distinguished husband and with wealth!
+
+Renovales, in the darkness, lifted his hands to his forehead in despair,
+infuriated at the sing-song of her unjust words.
+
+"Her mother!" he thought. "It's lucky that intolerable old dame is under
+the sod forever. Her brothers! A crowd of rakes that are always asking
+me for something whenever they get a chance. Heavens! Give me the
+patience to stand this woman, the calm resignation to keep a cool head
+and not to forget that I am a man!"
+
+He scorned her mentally in order to maintain his indifference in this
+way. Bah! A woman! and a sick one! Every man carries his cross and his
+was Josephina.
+
+But she, as if she penetrated his thoughts, stopped crying and spoke to
+him slowly in a voice that shook with cruel irony.
+
+"You need not expect anything from the Alberca woman," she said suddenly
+with feminine incoherence. "I warn you that she has worshipers by the
+dozen, young and stylish, too, something that counts more with women
+than talent."
+
+"What difference does that make to me?" Renovales' voice roared in the
+darkness with an outbreak of wrath.
+
+"I'm telling you, so that you won't fool yourself. Master, you are going
+to suffer a failure. You are very old, my good man, the years are going
+by. So old and so ugly that if you had looked the way you do when I met
+you, I should never have been your wife in spite of all your glory."
+
+After this thrust, satisfied and calm, she seemed to go to sleep.
+
+The master remained motionless, lying on his back with his head resting
+on his arms and his eyes wide open, seeing in the darkness a host of red
+spots that spread out in ceaseless rotation, forming floating, fiery
+rings. His wrath had set his nerves on edge; the final thrust made sleep
+impossible. He felt restless, wide-awake after this cruel shock to his
+pride. He thought that in his bed, close to him, he had his worst enemy.
+He hated that frail form that he could touch with the slightest
+movement, as if it contained the rancor of all the adversaries he had
+met in life.
+
+Old! Contemptible! Inferior to those young bloods that swarmed around
+the Alberca woman; he, a man known all over Europe, and in whose
+presence all the young ladies that painted fans and water-colors of
+birds and flowers, grew pale with emotion, looking at him with
+worshiping eyes!
+
+"I will soon show you, you poor woman," he thought, while a cruel laugh
+shook silently in the darkness. "You'll soon see whether glory means
+anything and people find me as old as you believe."
+
+With boyish joy, he recalled the twilight scene, the kiss on the
+countess's hand, her gentle abandon, that mingling of resistance and
+pleasure which opened the way for him to go farther. He enjoyed these
+memories with a relish of vengeance.
+
+Afterwards, his body, as he moved, touched Josephina, who seemed to be
+asleep, and he felt a sort of repugnance as if he had rubbed against a
+hostile creature.
+
+She was his enemy; she had distorted and ruined his life as an artist,
+she had saddened his life as a man. Now he believed that he might have
+produced the most remarkable works, if he had not known that little
+woman who crushed him with her weight. Her silent censure, her prying
+eyes, that narrow, petty morality of a well-educated girl, blocked his
+course and made him turn out of his way. Her fits of temper, her nervous
+attacks, made him lose his bearings, belittling him, robbing him of his
+strength for work. Must he always live like this? The thought of the
+long years before him filled him with horror, the long road that life
+offered him, monotonous, dusty, rough, without a shadow or a resting
+place, a painful journey lacking enthusiasm and ardor, pulling at the
+chain of duty, at the end of which dragged the enemy, always fretful,
+always unjust, with the selfish cruelty of disease, spying on him with
+searching eyes in the hours when his mind was off its guard, while he
+slept, violating his secrecy, forcing his immobility, robbing him of his
+most intimate ideas, only to parade them before his eyes later with the
+insolence of a successful thief. And that was what his life was to be!
+God! No, it was better to die.
+
+Then in the black recesses of his brain there rose, like a blue spark of
+infernal gleam, a thought, a desire, that made a chill of terror and
+surprise run over his body.
+
+"If she would only die!"
+
+Why not? Always ill, always sad, she seemed to darken his mind with the
+wings that beat ominously. He had a right to liberty, to break the
+chain, because he was the stronger. He had spent his life in the
+struggle for glory, and glory was a delusion, if it brought only cold
+respect from his fellows, if it could not be exchanged for something
+more positive. Many years of intense existence were left; he could still
+exult in a host of pleasures, he could still live, like some artists
+whom he admired, intoxicated with worldly joys, working in mad freedom.
+
+"Oh, if she would only die!"
+
+He recalled books he had read, in which other imaginary people had
+desired another's death that they might be able to satisfy more fully
+their appetites and passions.
+
+Suddenly he felt as though he were awakening from a bad dream, as though
+he were throwing off an overwhelming nightmare. Poor Josephina! His
+thought filled him with horror, he felt the infernal desire burning his
+conscience, like a hot iron that throws off a shower of sparks when
+touched. It was not tenderness that made him turn again towards his
+companion; not that; his old animosity remained. But he thought of her
+years of sacrifice, of the privations she had suffered, following him in
+the struggle with misery, without a complaint, without a protest, in the
+pains of motherhood, in the nursing of her daughter, that Milita who
+seemed to have stolen all the strength of her body and perhaps was the
+cause of her decline. How terrible to wish for her death! He hoped that
+she would live. He would bear everything with the patience of duty. She
+die? Never, he would rather die himself.
+
+But in vain did he struggle to forget the thought. The atrocious,
+monstrous desire, once awakened, resisted, refused to recede, to hide,
+to die in the windings of his brain whence it had arisen. In vain did he
+repent his villainy, or feel ashamed of his cruel idea, striving to
+crush it forever. It seemed as though a second personality had arisen
+within him, rebellious to his commands, opposed to his conscience, hard
+and indifferent to his sympathetic scruples, and this personality, this
+power, continued to sing in his ear with a merry accent, as if it
+promised him all the pleasures of life.
+
+"If she would only die! Eh, master? If she would only die!"
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+At the coming of spring López de Sosa, "the intrepid sportsman," as
+Cotoner called him, appeared at Renovales' house every afternoon.
+
+Outside the entrance gate stood his eighty-horsepower automobile, his
+latest acquisition, of which he was intensely proud, a huge green car,
+that started and backed under the hand of the chauffeur while its owner
+was crossing the garden of the painter's house.
+
+Renovales saw him enter the studio, in a blue suit with a shining visor
+over his eyes, affecting the resolute bearing of a sailor or an
+explorer.
+
+"Good afternoon, Don Mariano, I have come for the ladies."
+
+And Milita came down stairs in a long gray coat, with a white cap,
+around which she wound a long blue veil. After her came her mother clad
+in the same fashion, small and insignificant beside the girl, who seemed
+to overwhelm her with her health and grace.
+
+Renovales approved of these trips. Josephina's legs were troubling her;
+a sudden weakness sometimes kept her in her chair for days at a time.
+Finding any sort of movement difficult, she liked to ride motionless in
+that car that fairly ate up space, reaching distant suburbs of Madrid
+without the least effort, as if she had not moved from the house.
+
+"Have a good time," said the painter with a sort of joy at the prospect
+of being left alone, completely alone, without the disturbance of
+feeling his wife's hostility near him. "I entrust them to you,
+Rafaelito; be careful, now."
+
+And Rafaelito assumed an expression of protest, as if he were shocked
+that anyone could doubt his skill. There was no danger with him.
+
+"Aren't you coming, Don Mariano? Lay down your brushes for a while.
+We're only going to the Pardo."
+
+The painter declined; he had a great deal to do. He knew what it was,
+and he did not like to go so fast. There was no pleasure in swallowing
+space with your eyes almost closed, unable to see anything but a hazy
+blur of the scenery, amid clouds of dust and crushed stone. He preferred
+to look at the landscape calmly, without haste, with the reflective
+quiet of the student. Besides he was out of place in things that did not
+belong to his time; he was getting old and these frightful novelties did
+not agree with him.
+
+"Good-by, papa."
+
+Milita, lifting her veil, put out her red, tempting lips, showing her
+bright teeth as she smiled. After this kiss came the other, formal and
+cold, exchanged with the indifference of habit, without any novelty
+except that Josephina's mouth drew back from his, as if she wanted to
+avoid any contact with him.
+
+They went out, the mother leaning on Rafaelito's arm with a sort of
+languor, as if she could hardly drag her weak body,--her pale face
+unrelieved by the least sign of blood.
+
+When Renovales found himself alone in the studio he would feel as happy
+as a school-boy on a holiday. He worked with a lighter touch, he roared
+out old songs, delighting to listen to the echoes that his voice
+awakened in the high-studded rooms. Often when Cotoner came in, he would
+surprise him by the serene shamelessness with which he sang some one of
+the licentious songs he had learned in Rome, and the painter of the
+Popes, smiling like a faun, joined in the chorus, applauding at the end
+these ribald verses of the studio.
+
+Tekli, the Hungarian, who sometimes spent an afternoon with him, had
+departed for his native land with his copy of _Las Meninas_, but not
+before lifting Renovales' hands several times to his heart, with
+extravagant terms of affection and calling him "noble master." The
+portrait of the Countess of Alberca was no longer in the studio; in a
+glittering frame it hung on the walls of the illustrious lady's
+drawing-room, where it received the worship of her admirers.
+
+Sometimes of an afternoon when the ladies had left the studio and the
+dull mumble of the car and the tooting of the horn had died away, the
+master and his friend would talk of López de Sosa. A good fellow,
+somewhat foolish, but well-meaning; this was the judgment of Renovales
+and his old friend. He was proud of his mustache that gave him a certain
+likeness to the German emperor, and when he sat down, he took care to
+show his hands, by placing them prominently on his knees, in order that
+everyone might appreciate their vigorous hugeness, the prominent veins,
+and the strong fingers, all this with the naïve satisfaction of a
+ditch-digger. His conversation always turned on feats of strength and
+before the two artists he strutted as if he belonged to another race,
+talking of his prowess as a fencer, of his triumphs in the bouts, of the
+weights he could lift with the slightest effort, of the number of chairs
+he could jump over without touching one of them. Often he interrupted
+the two painters when they were eulogizing the great masters of art, to
+tell them of the latest victory of some celebrated driver in the contest
+for a coveted cup. He knew by heart the names of all the European
+champions who had won the immortal laurel, in running, jumping, killing
+pigeons, boxing or fencing.
+
+Renovales had seen him come into the studio one afternoon, trembling
+with excitement, his eyes flashing, and showing a telegram.
+
+"Don Mariano, I have a Mercedes; they have just announced its shipment."
+
+The painter looked blank. Who was that personage with the woman's name?
+And Rafaelito smiled with pity.
+
+"The best make, a Mercedes, better than a Panhard; everyone knows that.
+Made in Germany; sixty thousand francs. There isn't another one in
+Madrid."
+
+"Well, congratulations."
+
+And the artist shrugged his shoulders and went on painting.
+
+López de Sosa was wealthy. His father, a former manufacturer of canned
+goods, had left him a fortune that he administered prudently, never
+gambling, nor keeping mistresses (he had no time for such follies) but
+finding all his amusement in sports that strengthen the body. He had a
+coach-house of his own, where he kept his carriages and his automobiles
+which he showed to his friends with the satisfaction of an artist. It
+was his museum. Besides, he owned several teams of horses, for modern
+fads did not make him forget his former tastes, and he took as much
+pride in his past glories as a horseman as he did in his skill as a
+driver of cars. At rare intervals, on the days of an important
+bull-fight or when some sensational races were being run in the
+Hippodrome, he won a triumph on the box by driving six cabs, covered
+with tassels and bells, that seemed to proclaim the glory and wealth of
+their owner with their noisy course.
+
+He was proud of his virtuous life; free from foolishness or petty love
+affairs, wholly devoted to sports and show. His income was less than his
+expenses. The numerous personnel of his stable-garage, his horses,
+gasoline and tailors' bills ate up even a part of the principal. But
+López de Sosa was undisturbed in this ruinous course,--for he was
+conscious of the danger, in spite of his extravagance. It was a mere
+youthful folly, he would cut down his expenses when he married. He
+devoted his evenings to reading, for he could not sleep quietly, unless
+he went through his classics (sporting-papers, automobile catalogs,
+etc.), and every month he made new acquisitions abroad, spending
+thousands of francs and, complaining, like a serious business man, of
+the rise in the Exchange, of the exorbitant customs charges, of the
+stupidity of the Government that so shackled the development of the
+country. The price of every automobile was greatly increased on crossing
+the frontier. And after that, politicians expected progress and
+regeneration!
+
+He had been educated by the Jesuits at the University of Deusto and had
+his degree in law. But that had not made him over-pious. He was liberal,
+he lived the modern spirit; he had no use for fanaticism nor hypocrisy.
+He had said good-by to the good Fathers as soon as his own father, who
+was a great admirer of them, had died. But he still preserved a certain
+respect for them because they had been his teachers and he knew that
+they were great scholars. But modern life was different. He read with
+perfect freedom, he read a great deal; he had in his house a library
+composed of at least a hundred French novels. He purchased all the
+volumes that came from Paris with a woman's picture on the cover and in
+which, under pretext of describing Greek, Roman, or Egyptian customs,
+the author placed a large number of youths and maidens without any
+other decorations of civilization than the fillets and the caps that
+covered their heads.
+
+He insisted on freedom, perfect freedom, but for him, men were divided
+into two castes, decent people and those who were not. Among the first
+figured en masse all the young fellows of the Gran Peña, the old men of
+the Casino, together with some people whose names appeared in the
+papers, a certain evidence of their merit. The rest was the rabble,
+despicable and vulgar in the streets of the cities, repulsive and
+displeasing on the road, whom he insulted with all of the coarseness of
+ill-breeding and threatened to kill when a child ran in front of his car
+with the vicious purpose of letting itself be crushed under the wheels,
+to stir up trouble with a decent person, or when some workingman,
+pretending he could not hear the warnings of his horn, would not get out
+of the way and was run over--as if a man who makes two pesetas a day
+were superior to machines that cost thousands of francs! What could you
+do with such ignorant, commonplace people! And some wretches were still
+talking about the rights of man and revolutions!
+
+Cotoner, who expended incredible care in keeping his single suit
+presentable for calls and dinners, questioned López de Sosa with
+astonishment in regard to the progress of his wardrobe.
+
+"How many ties have you now, Rafael?"
+
+"About seven hundred." He had counted them recently. And ashamed that he
+did not yet own the longed-for thousand, he spoke of fitting himself out
+on his next trip to London when the principal British automobilists were
+to contend for the cup. He received his boots from Paris, but they were
+made by a Swiss boot-maker, the same one who provided the foot-gear of
+Edward of England; he counted his trousers by the dozen, and never wore
+one pair more than eight or ten times; his linen was given to his valet
+almost before it was used, his hats all came from London. He had eight
+frock-coats made every year, that often grew old without ever being
+worn, of different colors to suit the circumstances and the hours when
+he must wear them. One in particular, dead black with long skirts,
+gloomy and austere, copied from the foreign illustrations that
+represented duels, was his uniform on solemn occasions, which he wore
+when some friend looked him up at the Peña, to get his assistance in
+representing him with his customary skill in affairs of honor.
+
+His tailor admired his talent, his masterly command in choosing cloth
+and deciding on the cut among the countless designs. Result, he spent
+something like five thousand dollars a year on his clothes, and said
+ingenuously to the two artists,
+
+"How much less can a decent person spend if he wants to be presentable?"
+
+López de Sosa visited Renovales' house as a friend after the latter had
+painted his portrait. In spite of his automobiles, his clothes, and the
+fact that he chose his associates among people who bore noble titles, he
+could not succeed in getting a foothold in society. He knew that behind
+his back people nicknamed him, "Pickled Herring," alluding to his
+father's trade, and that the young ladies, who counted him as a friend,
+rebelled at the idea of marrying the "Canned-goods Boy," which was
+another of his names. The friendship of Renovales was a source of pride.
+
+He had requested him to make his portrait, paying him without haggling,
+in order that he might appear at the Exhibition, quite as good a way as
+any other of introducing his insignificance among the famous men who
+were painted by the artist. After that he was on intimate terms with the
+master, talking everywhere about "his friend, Renovales!" with a sort of
+familiarity, as if he were a comrade who could not live without him.
+This raised him greatly in the estimation of his acquaintances. Besides,
+he had felt a real admiration for the master ever since one afternoon
+when tired out with the account of his prowess as a fencer, Renovales
+had laid aside his brushes and taking down two old foils, had had
+several bouts with him. What a man he was! And how he remembered the
+points he had learned in Rome!
+
+In his frequent visits to the artist's house, he finally felt attracted
+toward Milita; he saw in her the woman he wanted to marry. Lacking more
+sonorous titles, it was something to be the son-in-law of Renovales.
+Besides, the painter enjoyed the reputation of being wealthy, he spoke
+of his enormous profits, and he still had many years before him, to add
+to his fortune, all of which would be his daughter's.
+
+López de Sosa began to pay court to Milita, calling on his great
+resources, appearing every day in a different suit, coming every
+afternoon, sometimes in a carriage drawn by a dashing pair, sometimes in
+one of his cars. The fashionable youth won the favor of her mother,--an
+important part. This was the kind of a husband for her daughter. No
+painter! And in vain did Soldevilla put on his brightest ties and show
+off shocking waistcoats; his rival crushed him and, what was worse, the
+master's wife, who formerly used to have a sort of motherly concern for
+him and called him by his first name, for she had known him as a boy,
+now received him coldly, as if she wished to discourage his suit for
+Milita.
+
+The girl fluctuated between her two admirers with a mocking smile. One
+seemed to interest her as much as the other. She drove the painter, the
+companion of her childhood, to despair, at times abusing him with her
+jests, at others attracting him with her effusive intimacy, as in the
+days when they played together; and at the same time she praised López
+de Sosa's stylishness, laughed with him, and Soldevilla even suspected
+that they wrote letters to each other as if they were engaged.
+
+Renovales rejoiced at the cleverness with which his daughter kept the
+two young men uncertain and eager about her. She was a terror, a boy in
+skirts, more manly than either of her worshipers.
+
+"I know her, Pepe," he said to Cotoner. "We must let her do what she
+wants to. The day she decides in favor of one or the other we'll have to
+marry her at once. She isn't one of the girls to wait. If we don't marry
+her soon and to her taste, she's likely to elope with her fiancé."
+
+The father excused Milita's impatience. Poor girl! Think what she saw in
+her home! Her mother always ill, terrifying her with her tears, her
+cries and her nervous attacks; her father working in his studio, and her
+only companion the unsympathetic "Miss." He owed his thanks to López de
+Sosa for taking them outdoors on these dizzy rides from which Josephina
+returned greatly quieted.
+
+Renovales preferred his pupil. He was almost his son, he had fought many
+a hard battle to give him fellowships and prizes. He was a trifle
+displeased at some of his slight infidelities, for as soon as he had won
+some renown, he bragged about his independence, praising everything that
+the master thought condemnable behind his back. But even so, the idea of
+his marrying his daughter pleased him; a painter as a son-in-law; his
+grandchildren painters, the blood of Renovales perpetuated in a dynasty
+of artists who would fill history with their glory.
+
+"But, oh, Pepe! I'm afraid the girl will choose the other. After all,
+she's a woman. And women appreciate only what they see, gallantry and
+youth."
+
+And the master's words betrayed a certain bitterness, as though he were
+thinking of something very different from what he was saying.
+
+Then he began to discuss the merits of López de Sosa, as if he were
+already a member of the family.
+
+"A good boy, isn't he, Pepe? A little stupid for us, unable to talk for
+ten minutes without making us yawn, a fine fellow, but not our kind."
+
+There was scorn in Renovales' voice as he spoke of the vigorous healthy
+young men of the present, with their brains absolutely free from
+culture, who had just assaulted life, invading every phase of it. What
+people! Gymnastics, fencing, kicking a huge bull, swinging a mallet on
+horseback, wild flights in an automobile; from the royal family down to
+the last middle-class scion everyone rushed into this life of childish
+joy, as if a man's mission consisted merely in hardening his muscles,
+sweating and delighting in the shifting chances of a game. Activity fled
+from the brain to the extremities of the body. They were strong, but
+their minds lay fallow, wrapped in a haze of childish credulity. Modern
+men seemed to stop growing at the age of fourteen; they never went
+beyond, content with the joys of movement and strength. Many of these
+big fellows were ignorant of women, or almost so, at the age when in
+other times they were turning back, satiated with love. Busy running
+without direction or end, they had no time nor quiet to think about
+women. Love was about to go on a strike, unable to resist the
+competition of sports. The young men lived by themselves, finding in
+athletic exercise a satisfaction that left them without any desire or
+curiosity for the other pleasures of life. They were big boys with
+strong fists; they could fight with a bull and yet the approach of a
+woman filled them with terror. All the sap of their life was used up in
+violent exercise. Intelligence seemed to have concentrated in their
+hands, leaving their heads empty. What was going to become of this new
+people? Perhaps it would form a healthier, stronger human race, but
+without love or passion, without any other association than the blind
+impulse of reproduction.
+
+"We are a different sort, eh, Pepe?" said Renovales with a sly wink.
+"When we were boys we didn't care for our bodies so well, but we had
+better times. We weren't so pure, but we were interested in something
+higher than automobiles and prize cups; we had ideals."
+
+Then he began to talk again of the young man who expected to become one
+of his family and made sport of his mentality.
+
+"If Milita decides on him, I won't object. The important thing in such
+matters is that they should be congenial to each other. He's a good boy;
+I could almost give him my blessing. But I suspect that when the
+sensation of novelty has worn off, he will go back to his fads and poor
+Milita will be jealous of those machines that are eating up the greater
+part of his fortune."
+
+Sometimes, before the light died out in the afternoon, Renovales excused
+his model, if he had one, and laying aside his brushes went out of the
+studio. When he came back, he would have on his coat and hat.
+
+"Pepe, let's take a walk."
+
+Cotoner knew where this walk would land them.
+
+They followed the iron fence of the Retiro and went down the Calle de
+Alcalá, walking slowly among the groups of strollers, some of whom
+turned round behind them to point out the master. "That taller one is
+Renovales, the painter." In a few minutes, Mariano hastened his step
+with nervous impatience, he stopped talking and Cotoner followed him
+with an ill-humored expression, humming between his teeth. When they
+reached the Cibeles, the old painter knew that their walk was nearly
+over.
+
+"I'll see you to-morrow, Pepe, I'm going this way. I've got to see the
+countess."
+
+One day, he did not limit himself to this brief leave-taking. After he
+had gone a few steps, he came back toward his companion and said
+hesitatingly:
+
+"Listen, if Josephina asks you where I went, don't say anything. I know
+that you are prudent but she is always worried. I tell you this so as to
+avoid any trouble. The two women don't get along together very well.
+Some woman's quarrel!"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+At the opening of spring, when Madrid was beginning to think good
+weather had really come, and people were impatiently getting out their
+summer clothes, there was an unexpected and treacherous return of winter
+that clouded the sky and covered with a coat of snow the muddy ground
+and the gardens where the first flowers of spring were beginning to
+sprout.
+
+There was a fire once more in the fireplace in the drawing-room of the
+Countess of Alberca, where all the gentlemen who formed her coterie
+gathered to keep warm on days when she was "at home," not having a
+meeting to preside over or calls to make.
+
+When Renovales came one afternoon, he spoke enthusiastically of the view
+of Moncloa, covered with snow. He had just been there, a beautiful
+sight, the woods, buried in wintry silence, surprised by the white
+shroud when they were beginning to crack with the swelling of the sap.
+It was a pity that the camera craze filled the woods with so many people
+who went back and forth with their outfits, sullying the purity of the
+snow.
+
+The countess was as interested as a child. She wanted to see that, she
+would go the next day. Her friends tried in vain to dissuade her,
+telling her the weather would probably change presently. To-morrow the
+sun would come out, the snow would melt; these unexpected storms were
+characteristic of the fickle climate of Madrid.
+
+"It makes no difference," said Concha obstinately, "I've got the idea
+into my head. It's years since I have seen it. My life is such a busy
+one."
+
+She would go to see the thaw in the morning; no, not in the morning. She
+got up late and had to receive all those Women's Rights ladies that came
+to consult her. In the afternoon, she would go after luncheon. It was
+too bad that Renovales worked at that time and could not go with her. He
+could appreciate landscapes so well with his artist's eyes and had often
+spoken to her of the sunset from the palace of Moncloa, a sight almost
+equal to the one you can see in Rome from the Pinzio at dusk. The
+painter smiled gallantly. He would try to be at Moncloa the next day;
+they would meet.
+
+The countess seemed to take sudden fright at this promise and glanced at
+Doctor Monteverde. But she was disappointed in her hope of being
+censured for her fickleness and unfaithfulness, for the doctor remained
+indifferent.
+
+Lucky doctor! How Renovales hated him. He was a young man, as fair and
+as fragile as a porcelain figure, a combination of such striking
+beauties that his face was almost a caricature. His hair, parted in two
+waves over his pale forehead, was black, very black and shining with
+bluish reflections, his eyes, as soft as velvet, showed the read spot of
+the lachrymal on the polished ivory of the cornea, veritable odalisque
+eyes, his bright red lips showed under his bristly mustache, his
+complexion was as pale as a camellia, and his teeth flashed like pearl.
+Concha looked at him with ecstatic devotion, talked with her eyes on
+him, consulting him with her glance, lamenting inwardly his lack of
+mastery, eager to be his slave, to be corrected by him in all the
+caprices of her giddy character.
+
+Renovales scorned him, questioning his manhood, making the most
+atrocious comments on him in his rough fashion.
+
+He was a doctor of science and was waiting for a chair at Madrid to be
+declared vacant, that he might become a candidate for it. The Countess
+of Alberca had him under her high protection, talking about him
+enthusiastically to all the important gentlemen who exercised any
+influence in University circles. She would break out into the most
+extravagant praise of the doctor in Renovales' presence. He was a
+scholar and what made her admire him was the fact that all his learning
+did not keep him from dressing well and being as fair as an angel.
+
+"For pretty teeth, look at Monteverde's," she would say, looking at him
+in the crowded room, through her lorgnette.
+
+At other times, following the course of her ideas, she would interrupt
+the conversation, without noticing the irrelevancy of her words.
+
+"But did you notice the doctor's hands? They're more delicate than mine!
+They look like a woman's hands."
+
+The painter was indignant at these demonstrations of Concha's that often
+occurred in her husband's presence.
+
+The calm of that honorable gentleman astounded him. Was the man blind?
+And the count with fatherly good humor always said the same thing.
+
+"That Concha! Did you ever hear such frankness! Don't mind her,
+Monteverde, it's my wife's way, childishness."
+
+The doctor would smile, flattered at the atmosphere of worship with
+which the countess surrounded him.
+
+He had written a book on the natural origin of animal organism, of which
+the fair countess spoke enthusiastically. The painter observed this
+change in her tastes with surprise and envy. No more music, nor verses,
+nor plastic arts which had formerly occupied her flighty attention, that
+was attracted by everything that shines or makes a noise. Now she looked
+on the arts as pretty, insignificant toys that were fit to amuse only
+the childhood of the human race. Times were changing, people must be
+serious. Science, nothing but science; she was the protectress, the good
+friend, the adviser of a scholar. And Renovales found famous books on
+the tables and chairs, feverishly run through and laid aside because she
+grew tired of them or could not understand them after the first impulse
+of curiosity.
+
+Her coterie, almost wholly composed of old gentlemen attracted by the
+beauty of the countess, and in love with her though without hope, smiled
+to hear her talking so weightily about science. Men who were prominent
+in politics admired her frankly. How many things that woman knew! Many
+that they did not know themselves. The others, well-known physicians,
+professors, lawyers, who had not studied anything for years, approved
+complacently. For a woman it was not at all bad. And she, lifting her
+glasses to her eyes from time to time to relish the doctor's beauty,
+talked with a pedantic slowness about protoplasms, and the reproduction
+of the cells, the cannibalisms of the phagocytes, catarine, anthropoid
+and pithecoid apes, discoplacentary mammals and the Pithecanthropos,
+treating the mysteries of life with friendly confidence, repeating
+strange scientific words, as if they were the names of society folks,
+who had dined with her the evening before.
+
+The handsome Doctor Monteverde, according to her, was head and shoulders
+above all the scholars of universal reputation.
+
+Their books made her tired, she could not make anything out of them, in
+spite of the fact that the doctor admired them greatly. To make up for
+this, she had read Monteverde's book over and over, and she recommended
+this wonderful work to her lady friends, who in matters of reading never
+went beyond the novels in popular magazines.
+
+"He is a scholar," said the countess one afternoon while talking alone
+with Renovales. "He's just beginning now, but I will push him ahead and
+he will turn out to be a genius. He has extraordinary talent. I wish you
+had read his book. Are you acquainted with Darwin? You aren't, are you?
+Well, he is greater than Darwin, much greater."
+
+"I can believe that," said the painter. "Your Monteverde is as pretty as
+a baby and Darwin was an ugly old fellow."
+
+The countess hesitated whether to get serious or to laugh, and finally
+she shook her lorgnette at him.
+
+"Keep still, you horrid man. After all, you're a painter. You can't
+understand tender friendships, pure relations, fraternity based on
+study."
+
+How bitterly the painter laughed at this purity and fraternity! His eyes
+were good and Concha, for her part, was no model of prudence in hiding
+her feelings. Monteverde was her lover, just as formerly a musician had
+been, at a period when the countess talked of nothing but Beethoven and
+Wagner, as if they were callers, and long before that a pretty little
+duke, who gave private amateur bull-fights at which he slaughtered the
+innocent oxen after greeting lovingly the Alberca woman, who, wrapped in
+a white mantilla, and decorated with pinks, leaned out of the box in the
+grandstand. Her relations with the doctor were almost common talk. That
+was amply proved by the fury with which the gentlemen of her coterie
+pulled him to pieces, declaring that he was an idiot and that his book
+was a Harlequin's coat, a series of excerpts from other men, poorly
+basted together, with the daring of ignorance. They, too, were stung by
+envy, in their senile, silent love, by the triumph of that stripling who
+carried off their idol, whom they had worshiped with a contemplative
+devotion that gave new life to their old age.
+
+Renovales was angry with himself. He tried in vain to overcome the habit
+that made him turn his steps every afternoon toward the countess's
+house.
+
+"I'll never go there again," he would say when he was back in his
+studio. "A pretty part you're playing, Mariano! Acting as a chorus to a
+love duet, in the company of all these senile imbeciles. A fine aim in
+life, this countess of yours!"
+
+But the next day he would go back, thinking with a sort of hope of
+Monteverde's pretentious superiority, and the disdainful air with which
+he received his fair adorer's worship. Concha would soon get tired of
+this mustached doll and turn her eyes on him, a man.
+
+The painter observed the transformation of his nature. He was a
+different man, and he made every effort to keep his family from noticing
+this change. He recognized mentally that he was in love, with the
+satisfaction of a mature man who sees in this a sign of youth the
+budding of a second life. He had felt impelled toward Concha by the
+desire of breaking the monotony of his existence, of imitating other
+men, of tasting the acidity of infidelity, in a brief escape from the
+stern imposing walls that shut in the desert of married life which was
+every day covered with more brambles and tares. Her resistance
+exasperated him, increasing his desire. He was not exactly sure how he
+felt; perhaps it was merely a physical attraction and added to that the
+wound to his pride, the bitterness of being repelled when he came down
+from the heights of virtue, where he had held his position with savage
+pride, believing that all the joys of the earth were waiting for him,
+dazzled by his glory and that he had only to hold out his arms and they
+would run to him.
+
+He felt humiliated by his failure; a dumb rage filled him when he
+compared his gray hair and his eyes, surrounded by growing wrinkles,
+with that pretty boy of science who seemed to drive the countess insane.
+Women! Their intellectual interest, their exaggerated admiration of
+fame! A lie! They worshiped talent only when it was well presented in a
+young and beautiful covering.
+
+Impelled by his obstinacy, Renovales was determined to overcome the
+resistance. He recalled, without the least remorse, the scene with his
+wife in the bedroom, and her scornful words that foretold his failure
+with the countess. Josephina's disdain was only another spur to urge him
+to continue his course.
+
+Concha kept him off and led him on at the same time. There was no doubt
+that the master's love flattered her vanity. She laughed at his
+passionate protestations, taking them in jest, always answering them in
+the same tone: "Be dignified, master. That isn't becoming to you. You
+are a great man, a genius. Let the boys be the ones to play the part of
+the lovesick student." But when enraged at her subtle mockery, he took a
+mental oath not to come back again, she seemed to guess it and she
+suddenly assumed an affectionate air, attracting him with an interest
+that made him foresee the near approach of his triumph.
+
+If he was offended and kept silence, she was the one who talked of love,
+of eternal passions between two beings of lofty minds, based on the
+harmony of their thoughts; and she did not cease this dangerous
+conversation until the master, with a sudden renewal of confidence,
+came forward offering his love, only to be received with that kindly and
+still ironical smile that seemed to look on him as a child whose
+judgment was faulty.
+
+And so the master lived, fluctuating between hope and despair, now
+favored, now repelled, but always incapable of escaping from her
+influence, as if a crime were haunting him. He sought opportunities to
+see her alone with the ingenuity of a college boy, he invented pretexts
+for going to her house at unusual hours, when there were no callers
+present, and his courage failed him when he ran into the pretty doctor
+and felt around himself that sensation of uneasiness which always seizes
+an unwelcome guest.
+
+The vague hope of meeting the countess at Moncloa, of walking with her a
+whole afternoon, unmolested by that circle of insufferable people who
+surrounded her with their drooling worship, kept him excited all night
+and the next morning, as if a real rendezvous were awaiting him. Would
+she go? Was not her promise a mere whim that she had immediately
+forgotten? He sent a note to an ex-minister of State, whose portrait he
+was painting, to ask him not to come to the studio that afternoon, and
+after luncheon he got into a cab, telling the cabby to beat the horse,
+to go full speed, for fear of being late.
+
+He knew that it would be hours before she came, if she did come; but a
+mad, unreasonable impatience filled him. He thought without knowing why
+that, by arriving ahead of time, he would hasten the countess's coming.
+
+He got out in the square in front of the little palace of Moncloa. The
+cab disappeared in the direction of Madrid, up hill along an avenue that
+was lost in the distance behind an arch of dry branches.
+
+Renovales walked up and down, alone in the little square. The sun was
+shining in a patch of blue sky, among the heavy clouds. In the places
+which its rays did not reach, it was cold. The water ran down from the
+foot of the trees, after dripping from the branches and trickling down
+the trunks; it was melting rapidly. The wood seemed to weep with joy
+under the caress of the sun, that destroyed the last traces of the white
+shroud.
+
+The majestic silence of Nature, abandoned to its own power, surrounded
+the artist. The pines were swinging with the long gusts of wind, filling
+space with a murmur, like the sound of distant harps. The square was
+hidden in the icy shadow of the trees. Up above in the front of the
+palace some pigeons, seeking the sun above the tops of the pines, swept
+around the old flagpole and the classic busts blackened by the weather.
+Then, tired of flying, they settled down on the rusty iron balconies,
+adding to the old building a white fluttering decoration, a rustling
+garland of feathers. In the middle of the square a marble swan, with its
+neck violently stretched toward the sky, threw out a jet, whose murmur
+seemed to heighten the impression of icy cold which he felt in the
+shadow.
+
+Renovales began to walk, crushing the frozen crust that cracked under
+his feet in the shady places. He leaned over the circular iron rail that
+surrounds a part of the square. Through the curtain of black branches,
+where the first buds were beginning to open, he saw the ridge that
+bounds the horizon; the mountains of Guadarrama, phantoms of snow that
+were mingled with the masses of clouds. Nearer, the mountains of Pardo
+stood out with their dark peaks, black with pines, and to the left
+stretched out the slopes of the hills of the Casa de Campo, where the
+first yellow touches of spring were beginning to show.
+
+At his feet lay the fields of Moncloa, the antique little gardens, the
+grove of Viveros, bordering the stream. Carriages were moving in the
+roads below, their varnished tops flashing in the sun like fiery mortar
+boards. The meadows, the foliage of the woods, everything seemed clean
+and bright after the recent storm. The all-pervading green tone, with
+its infinite variations from black to yellow, smiled at the touch of the
+sun after the chill of the snow. In the distance sounded the constant
+reports of shotguns that seemed to tear the air with the intensity that
+is common in still afternoons. They were hunting in the Casa de Campo.
+Between the colonnades of trees and the green sheets of the meadows, the
+water flashed in the sun, bits of ponds, glimpses of canals, pools of
+melted snow, like bright trembling edges of huge swords, lost in the
+grass.
+
+Renovales hardly looked at the landscape; it had no message for him that
+afternoon. He was preoccupied with other things. He saw a smart coupé
+come down the avenue, and he left the belvedere to go to meet it. She
+was coming! But the coupé passed by him, slowly and majestically without
+stopping and he saw through the window an old lady wrapped in furs, with
+sunken eyes and distorted mouth, trembling with old age, her head
+bobbing with the movement of the carriage. It disappeared in the
+direction of the little church beside the palace and the painter was
+alone again.
+
+No! She would not come! His heart began to tell him that there was no
+use waiting.
+
+Some little girls, with battered shoes, and straight greasy hair that
+floated around their necks, began to run about the square. Renovales did
+not see where they came from. Perhaps they were the children of the
+guardian of the palace.
+
+A guard came down the avenue with his gun hanging from his shoulder, and
+his horn at his side. Beyond approached a man in black, who looked like
+a servant, escorted by two huge dogs, two majestic bluish-gray Danes,
+that walked with a dignified bearing, prudent and moderate but proud of
+their terrifying appearance. Not a carriage could be seen. Curses!
+
+Seated on one of the stone benches, the master finally took out the
+little notebook that he always carried with him. He sketched the figures
+of the children as they ran around the fountain. That was one way to
+kill time. One after the other he sketched all the girls, then he caught
+them in several groups, but at last they disappeared behind the palace,
+going down toward the Caño Gordo. Renovales, having nothing to distract
+him, left his seat and walked about, stamping noisily. His feet were
+like ice, this waiting in the cold was putting him in a terrible mood.
+Then he went and sat down on another bench near the servant in black,
+who had the two dogs at his knees. They were sitting on their hind paws,
+resting with as much dignity as real people, watching that gentleman
+with their gray eyes that winked intelligently, as he looked at them
+attentively and then moved his pencil on the book that rested on his
+knee. The painter sketched the two dogs in different postures, giving
+himself up to the work with such interest that he quite forgot his
+purpose in coming there. Oh, what splendid creatures! Renovales loved
+animals in which beauty was united with strength. If he had lived alone
+and could have consulted his own tastes, he would have converted his
+house into a menagerie.
+
+The servant went away with his dogs and the artist once more was left
+alone. Several couples passed slowly, arm in arm, and disappeared behind
+the palace toward the gardens below. Then a group of school boys that
+left behind them, as their cassocks fluttered, that odor of healthy,
+dirty flesh that is peculiar to barracks and convents. And still the
+countess did not come!
+
+The painter went again to rest his elbows on the balustrade of the
+belvedere. He would only wait a half an hour longer. The afternoon was
+wearing away; the sun was still high, but from time to time the
+landscape was darkened. The clouds that had been confined on the horizon
+had been let loose and they were rolling through the field of the sky
+like a flock of sheep, assuming fantastic shapes, rushing eagerly in
+tumultuous confusion as if they wished to swallow the ball of fire that
+was slipping slowly over a bit of clear blue sky.
+
+Suddenly, Renovales felt a sort of shock near his heart. No one had
+touched him; it was a warning of his nerves that for some time had been
+especially irritable. She was near, was coming he was sure. And turning
+around, he saw her, still a long way off, coming down the avenue, in
+black with a fur coat, her hands in a little muff and a veil over her
+eyes. Her tall, graceful silhouette was outlined against the yellow
+ground as she passed the trees. Her carriage was returning up the hill,
+perhaps to wait for her at the top near the School of Agriculture.
+
+As she met him in the center of the square she held out her gloved hand,
+warm from the muff, and they turned toward the belvedere, chatting.
+
+"I'm in a furious mood, disgusted to death. I didn't expect to come; I
+forgot all about it, upon my word. But as I was coming out of the
+President's house I thought of you. I was sure I would find you here.
+And so I have come to have you drive away my ill humor."
+
+Through the veil, Renovales saw her eyes that flashed hostilely and her
+dainty lips angrily tightened.
+
+She spoke quickly, eager to vent the wrath that was swelling her heart,
+without paying any attention to what was around her, as if she were in
+her own drawing room where everything was familiar.
+
+She had been to see the Prime-Minister to recommend her "affair" to his
+attention; a desire of the count's on the fulfillment of which his
+happiness depended. Poor Paco (her husband) dreamed of the Golden
+Fleece. That was the only thing that was lacking to crown the tower of
+crosses, keys and ribbons that he was raising about his person, from his
+belly to his neck, till not an inch of his body was without this
+glorious covering. The Golden Fleece and then death! Why should they not
+do this favor for Paco, such a good man, who would not hurt a fly? What
+would it cost them to grant him this toy and make him happy?
+
+"There aren't any friends any longer, Mariano," said the countess
+bitterly. "The Prime-Minister is a fool who forgets his old friendships
+now that he is head of the government. I who have seen him sighing
+around me like a comic opera tenor, making love to me (yes, I tell the
+truth to you) and ready to commit suicide because I scorned his
+vulgarity and foolishness! This afternoon, the same old story; lots of
+holding my hand, lots of making eyes, 'dear Concha,' 'sweet Concha' and
+other sugary expressions, just such as he sings in Congress like an old
+canary. Sum total, the Fleece is impossible, he is very sorry, but at
+Court they are unwilling."
+
+And the countess, as if she saw for the first time where she was, turned
+her eyes angrily toward the dark hills of the Casa de Campo, where shots
+could still be heard.
+
+"And they wonder that people think this way or that! I am an anarchist,
+do you hear, Mariano? Every day I feel more revolutionary. Don't laugh,
+for it is no jest. Poor Paco, who is a lamb of God, is horrified to
+hear me. 'Woman, think what we are! We must be on good terms with the
+royal house.' But I rise in rebellion; I know them; a crowd of
+reprobates. Why shouldn't my Paco have the Fleece, if the poor man needs
+it. I tell you, master, this cowardly, meek country makes me raging mad.
+We ought to have what France had in '93. If I were alone, without all
+these trifles of name and position, I would do to-day something that
+would stir people. I'd throw a bomb, no, not a bomb; I'd get a revolver
+and----"
+
+"Fire!" shouted the painter, bursting into a laugh.
+
+Concha drew back indignantly.
+
+"Don't joke, master. I'll go away. I'll slap you. This is more serious
+than you think. This afternoon is no time for jokes."
+
+But her fickle nature contradicted the seriousness that she pretended to
+give her words, for she smiled slightly, as if pleased at some memory.
+
+"It wasn't wholly a failure," she said after a long pause. "My hands
+aren't empty. The prime-minister didn't want to make me his enemy and so
+he offered me a compensation, since the 'Lamb' affair was impossible. A
+deputy's chair at the next election."
+
+Renovales' eyes opened in astonishment. "For whom do you want that? To
+whom is that going to be given?"
+
+"To whom?" mimicked Concha with mock astonishment. "To whom! To whom do
+you suppose, you simpleton! Not for you, you don't know anything about
+that or anything else, except your brushes. For Monteverde, for the
+doctor, who will do great things."
+
+The artist's noisy laugh resounded in the silence of the square.
+
+"Darwin a deputy of the majority! Darwin saying 'Aye' and 'No.'"
+
+And after these exclamations his laugh of mock astonishment continued.
+
+"Laugh, you old bear! Open that mouth wider; wag your apostolic beard!
+How funny you are! And what's strange about that? But don't laugh any
+longer; you make me nervous. I'll go away, if you keep on like this."
+
+They remained silent for a long while. The countess was not long in
+forgetting her troubles; her bird-like brain never retained any one
+impression for long. She looked around her with disdainful eyes, eager
+to mortify the painter. Was that what Renovales raved over so? Was there
+nothing more?
+
+They began to walk slowly, going down to the terraced gardens behind the
+palace. They descended the moss-covered slopes that were streaked with
+the black flint of the flights of stairs.
+
+The silence was deathlike. The water murmured as it flowed from the
+trunks of the trees, forming little streams that trickled down hill,
+almost invisible in the grass. In some shady spots there still remained
+piles of snow, like bundles of white wool. The shrill cries of the birds
+sounded like the scratching of a diamond on glass. At the edge of the
+stairways, the pedestals of black, crumbling stone recalled the statues
+and urns they had once supported. The little gardens, cut in geometric
+figures, stretched out the Greek square of their carpet of foliage on
+each level of the terrace. In the squares, the fountains spurted in
+pools surrounded by rusted railings, or flowed down triple layers with a
+ceaseless murmur. Water everywhere,--in the air, in the ground,
+whispering, icy, adding to the cold impression of the landscape, where
+the sun seemed a red blotch of color devoid of heat.
+
+They passed under arches of vines, between huge dying trees covered to
+the top with winding rings of ivy that clung to the venerable trunks,
+veneered with a green and yellow crust. The paths were bounded on one
+side by the slope of the hill, from the top of which came the invisible
+tinkling of a bell, and where from time to time there appeared on the
+blue background of the sky the massive outline of a slowly moving cow.
+On the other, a rustic railing of branches painted white bounded the
+path and, beyond it, in the valley, lay the dark flower beds with their
+melancholy solitude and their fountains that wept day and night in an
+atmosphere of old age and abandon. The closely matted brambles stretched
+from tree to tree along the slopes. The slender cypresses, the tall
+pines with their straight trunks, formed a thick colonnade, a lattice
+through which the sunlight flitted, a false unearthly light, that
+striped the ground with bands of gold and bars of shadow.
+
+The painter praised the spot enthusiastically. It was the only corner
+for artists that could be found in Madrid. It was there that the great
+Don Francisco had worked. It seemed as though at some turn in the path
+they would run into Goya, sitting before his easel, scowling
+ill-naturedly at some dainty duchess who was serving as his model.
+
+Modern clothes seemed out of keeping with this background. Renovales
+declared that the correct apparel for such a landscape was a bright
+coat, a powdered wig, silk stockings, walking beside a Directoire gown.
+
+The countess smiled as she listened to the painter. She looked about
+with great curiosity; that was not a bad walk; she guessed it was the
+first time she ever saw it. Very pretty! But she was not fond of the
+country.
+
+To her mind the best landscape was the silks of a drawing room and, as
+for trees, she preferred the scenery at the Opera to the accompaniment
+of music.
+
+"The country bores me, master. It makes me so sad. If you leave Nature
+alone to itself it is very commonplace."
+
+They entered a little square in the center of which was a pool, on the
+level of the ground, with stone posts that marked where there had once
+been a railing. The water, swollen by the melting snow, was overflowing
+the stone curb, and reached out in a thin sheet as it started down hill.
+The countess stopped, afraid of wetting her feet. The painter went
+ahead, putting his feet in the driest places, taking her hand to guide
+her, and she followed him, laughing at the obstacle and picking up her
+skirts.
+
+As they continued their way down another path, Renovales kept that soft
+little hand in his, feeling its warmth through the glove. She let him
+hold it, as if she did not notice his touch, but still with a faint
+expression of mischievousness on her lips and in her eyes. The master
+seemed undecided, embarrassed, as if he did not know how to begin.
+
+"Always the same?" he asked weakly. "Haven't you a little charity for me
+to-day?"
+
+The countess broke out in a merry laugh.
+
+"There it comes. I was expecting it; that's why I hesitated to come. In
+the carriage I said to myself several times: 'My dear, you're making a
+mistake in going to Moncloa; you will be bored to death; you may expect
+declaration number one thousand.'"
+
+Then she assumed a tone of mock indignation.
+
+"But, master, can't you talk about anything else? Are we women condemned
+to be unable to talk with a man without his feeling obliged to pour out
+a proposal?"
+
+Renovales protested. She might say that to other men, but not to him,
+for he was in love with her. He swore it; he would say it on his knees,
+to make her believe it. Madly in love with her! But she mimicked him
+grotesquely, raising one hand to her breast and laughing cruelly.
+
+"Yes, I know, the old story. There's no use in your repeating it; I know
+it by heart. A volcano in my breast, impossible to live without you--if
+you do not love me, I will kill myself. They all say the same thing. I
+never saw such a lack of originality. Master, for goodness sake, do not
+be so commonplace! A man like you saying such things!"
+
+Renovales was crushed by her mocking mimicry. But Concha, as if she took
+pity on him, hastened to add, in an affectionate tone:
+
+"Why should you have to be in love with me? Do you think I shall esteem
+you less if I relieve you from an obligation that all men who surround
+me feel under? I like you, master; I need to see you; I should be very
+sorry if we quarreled. I like you as a friend; the best of all, the
+first. I like you because you are good; a great big boy; a bearded baby
+who doesn't know even the least bit about the world, but who is very,
+_very_ talented. I've wanted for a long time to see you alone, to talk
+with you quite freely, to tell you this. I like you as I like no one
+else. When I am with you, I feel a confidence such as no other man
+inspires in me. Good friends, brother and sister, if you will. But don't
+put on such a gloomy face! Look pleasant, please! Give one of your
+laughs that cheer my soul, master!"
+
+But the master remained sullen, looking at the ground, running the
+fingers of his hand through his thick beard.
+
+"All that's a lie, Concha," he said rudely. "The truth is that you are
+in love, you're mad over that worthless Monteverde."
+
+The countess smiled, as if the rudeness of these words flattered her.
+
+"Well, yes, Mariano. We like each other; I believe I love him as I
+never loved any man. I have never told anyone; you are the first one to
+hear it from me, because you are my friend, because somehow or other I
+tell you everything. We like each other or, rather, I like him much more
+than he does me. There is something like gratitude in my love. I don't
+deceive myself, Mariano! Thirty-six years! I venture to confess my age
+to you. However, I am still presentable; I keep my youth well, but he is
+much younger. Years younger and I could almost be his mother."
+
+She was silent for a moment, almost frightened at this difference
+between her lover's age and hers, but then she added with a sudden
+confidence:
+
+"He likes me, too, I know. I am his adviser, his inspiration; he says
+that with me he feels a new strength for work, that he will be a great
+man, thanks to me. But I like him more, much more than he does me; there
+is almost as great a difference in our affections as there is in our
+ages."
+
+"And why do you not love me?" said the master tearfully. "I worship you,
+the tables would be turned. I would be the one to surround you with
+constant idolatry, and you would let me worship you, caress you, as I
+would an idol, my head bowed at its feet."
+
+Concha laughed again, mocking the artist's hoarse voice, his passionate
+expression, and his eager eyes.
+
+"Why don't I love you? Master, don't be childish. There's no use in
+asking such things, you cannot dictate to Love. I do not like you as you
+want me to, because it is impossible. Be satisfied to be my best friend.
+You know I show a confidence in you that I do not show to Monteverde.
+Yes, I tell you things I would never tell him."
+
+"But the other part!" exclaimed the painter violently. "What I need,
+what I am hungry for,--you, your beauty, real love!"
+
+"Master, contain yourself," she said with affected modesty. "How well I
+know you! You're going to say some of those horrid things that men
+always say when they rave over a woman. I'm going away so as not to hear
+you."
+
+Then she added with maternal seriousness, as if she wanted to reprimand
+his violence:
+
+"I am not so crazy as people think. I consider the consequences of my
+actions carefully. Mariano, look at yourself, think of your position. A
+wife, a daughter who will marry one of these days, the prospect of being
+a grandfather. And you still think of such follies! I could not accede
+to your proposal even if I loved you. How terrible! To deceive
+Josephina, the friend of my school-days! Poor thing, so gentle, so
+kind,--always ill. No, Mariano, never. A man cannot enter such
+compromising affairs, unless he is free. I could never feel like loving
+you. Friends, nothing more than friends!"
+
+"Well, we will not be that," exclaimed Renovales impetuously. "I will
+leave your house forever. I will not see you any longer. I will do
+anything to forget you. It is an intolerable torment. My life will be
+calmer if I do not see you."
+
+"You will not go away," said Concha quietly, certain of her power. "You
+will remain beside me just as you always have, if you really like me,
+and I shall have in you my best friend. Don't be a baby, master, you
+will see that there is something charming about our friendship that you
+do not understand now. I shall give you something that the rest do not
+know,--intimacy, confidence."
+
+And as she said this, she put one hand on the painter's arm and drew
+closer to him, searching him with her eyes in which there was a strange,
+mysterious light.
+
+A horn sounded near them; there was swift rush of heavy wheels. An
+automobile shot past them at full speed, following the highroad.
+Renovales tried to make out the figures in the car, hardly larger than
+dolls in the distance. Perhaps it was López de Sosa, who was driving,
+perhaps his wife and daughter were those two little figures, wrapped in
+veils, who occupied the seats.
+
+The possibility of Josephina's having passed through the background of
+the landscape without seeing him, without noticing that he was there,
+forgetful of everything, an imploring lover, overcame him with the sense
+of remorse.
+
+They remained motionless for a long while in silence, leaning on the
+rough wooden railing, watching through the colonnade of the trees the
+bright, cherry-red sun, as it sank, lighting up the horizon with a blaze
+of fire. The leaden clouds, seeing it on the point of death, assailed it
+with treacherous greed.
+
+Concha watched the sunset with the interest that a sight but seldom seen
+arouses.
+
+"Look at that huge cloud, master. How black it is! It looks like a
+dragon; no, a hippopotamus; see its round paws, like towers. How it
+runs! It's going to eat the sun. It's eating it! It has swallowed it
+now!"
+
+The landscape grew dark. The sun had disappeared inside of that monster
+that filled the horizon. Its waving back was edged with silver, and as
+if it could not hold the burning star; it broke below, pouring out a
+rain of pale rays. Then, burned by this digestion, it vanished in smoke,
+was torn into black tufts, and once more the red disc appeared, bathing
+sky and earth with gold, peopling the water of the pools with restless
+fiery fishes.
+
+Renovales, leaning on the railing with one elbow beside the countess,
+breathed her subtle fragrance, felt the warm touch of her firm body.
+
+"Let's go back, master," she said with a suggestion of uneasiness in her
+voice. "I feel cold. Besides, with a companion like you, it's impossible
+to stay still."
+
+And she hastened her step, realizing from her experience with men the
+danger of remaining alone with Renovales. His pale, excited face warned
+her that he was likely to make some reckless, impetuous advance.
+
+In the square of Caño Gordo they passed a couple going slowly down the
+hill, very close together, not yet daring to walk arm in arm, but ready
+to put their arms around each other's waists as soon as they disappeared
+in the next path. The young man carried his cloak under his arm, as
+proudly as a gallant in the old comedies; she, small and pale, without
+any beauty except that of youth, was wrapped in a poor cloak and walked
+with her simple eyes fixed on her companion's.
+
+"Some student with his girl," said Renovales. "They are happier than we
+are, Concha."
+
+"We are getting old, master," she said with feigned sadness, excluding
+herself from old age, loading the whole burden of years on her
+companion.
+
+Renovales turned toward her in a final outburst of protest.
+
+"Why should I not be as happy as that boy? Haven't I a right to it?
+Concha, you do not know who I am; you forget it, accustomed as you are
+to treat me like a child. I am Renovales, the painter, the famous
+master. I am known all over the world."
+
+And he spoke of his fame with brutal indelicacy, growing more and more
+irritated at her coldness, displaying his renown like a mantle of light
+that should blind women and make them fall at his feet. And a man like
+him had to submit to being put off for that simpleton of a doctor?
+
+The countess smiled with pity. Her eyes, too, revealed a sort of
+compassion. The fool! The child! How absurd men of talent were!
+
+"Yes, you are a great man, master. That is why I am proud of your
+friendship. I even admit that it gives me some importance. I like you. I
+feel admiration for you."
+
+"No, not admiration, Concha, love! To belong to each other! Complete
+love."
+
+She continued to laugh.
+
+"Oh, my boy; Love!"
+
+Her eyes seemed to speak to him ironically. Love does not distinguish
+talents; it is ignorant and therefore boasts of its blindness. It only
+perceives the fragrance of youth, of life in its flower.
+
+"We shall be friends, Mariano, friends and nothing more. You will grow
+accustomed to it and find our affection dear. Don't be material; it
+doesn't seem as if you were an artist. Idealism, master, that is what
+you need."
+
+And she continued to talk to him from the heights of her pity, until
+they parted near the place where her carriage was waiting for her.
+
+"Friends, Mariano, nothing more than friends, but true friends."
+
+When Concha had gone, Renovales walked in the shadows of the twilight,
+gesticulating and clenching his fists, until he left Moncloa. Finding
+himself alone, he was again filled with wrath and insulted the countess
+mentally, now that he was free from the loving subjection that he
+suffered in her presence. How she amused herself with him! How his
+friends would laugh to see him helplessly submissive to that woman who
+had belonged to so many! His pride made him insist on conquering her,
+at any cost, even of humiliation and brutality. It was an affair of
+honor to make her his, even if it were only once, and then to take
+revenge by repelling her, throwing her at his feet, and saying with a
+sovereign air, "That is what I do to people who resist me."
+
+But then he realized his weakness. He would always be beaten by that
+woman who looked at him coldly, who never lost her calm and considered
+him an inferior being. His dejection made him think of his family, of
+his sick wife, and the duties that bound him to her, and he felt the
+bitter joy of the man who sacrifices himself, taking up his cross.
+
+His mind was made up. He would flee from the woman. He would not see her
+again.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+And he did not see her; he did not see her for two days. But on the
+third there came a letter in a long blue envelope scented with a perfume
+that made him tremble.
+
+The countess complained of his absence in affectionate terms. She needed
+to see him, she had many things to tell him. A real love-letter which
+the artist hastened to hide, for fear that if any one read it, he would
+suspect what was not yet true.
+
+Renovales was indignant.
+
+"I will go to see her," he said to himself, walking up and down the
+studio. "But it will be only to give her a piece of my mind, and have
+done with her once and for all. If she thinks she is going to play with
+me, she is mistaken; she doesn't know that, when I want to be, I am like
+stone."
+
+Poor master! While in one corner of his mind he was formulating this
+cruel determination to be a man of stone, in the other a sweet voice was
+murmuring seductively:
+
+"Go quickly, take advantage of the opportunity. Perhaps she has
+repented. She is waiting for you; she is going to be yours."
+
+And the artist hastened to the countess's anxiously. Nothing. She
+complained of his absence with affected sadness. She liked him so much!
+She needed to see him, she could not have any peace as long as she felt
+that he was offended with her on account of the other afternoon. And
+they spent nearly two hours together in the private room she used as an
+office, until at the end of the afternoon the serious friends of the
+countess began to arrive, her coterie of mute worshipers and last of
+all Monteverde with the calm of a man who has nothing to fear.
+
+The painter left the house. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened
+except that he had twice kissed the countess's hand; the conventional
+caress and nothing more. Whenever he tried to go farther, moving his
+lips along her arm, she checked him imperiously.
+
+"I shall be angry, master, and not receive you any more alone! You are
+not keeping the agreement!"
+
+Renovales protested. They had not made any agreement; but Concha managed
+to calm him instantly by asking about Milita, praising her beauty,
+inquiring for poor Josephina, so good, so lovable, showing great concern
+for her health and promising to call on her soon. And the master was
+restrained, tormented by remorse, not daring to make any new advances,
+until his discomfort had disappeared.
+
+He continued to visit the countess, as before. He felt that he must see
+her; he had grown accustomed to her enthusiastic praise of his artistic
+merits.
+
+Sometimes the impetuous nature of his youthful days awakened and he
+longed to rid himself of this shameful chain. The woman had bewitched
+him; she sent for him without any reason, she seemed to delight in
+making him suffer, she needed him for a plaything. She spoke of
+Monteverde and their love with quiet cynicism, as if the doctor were her
+husband. She had to confide the secrets of her life to some one, with
+that imperious naïveté that forces the guilty to confess. Little by
+little she let the master into the secret of her passion, telling him
+unblushingly of the most intimate details of their meetings, which were
+often in her own house. They took advantage of the blindness of the
+count, who seemed almost stunned by his failure to receive the Fleece;
+they took a morbid delight in the danger of being surprised.
+
+"I tell you this, Mariano, I don't know why it is I feel as I do toward
+you; I like you as a brother. No, not as a brother, rather as a
+confidential woman friend."
+
+When Renovales was alone, he despised Concha's frankness. It was just as
+people believed; she was very attractive, very pretty, but absolutely
+lacking in scruples. As for himself, he heaped insults on himself in the
+slang of his Bohemian days, comparing himself with all the horned
+animals he could think of.
+
+"I won't go there again. It's disgraceful. A pretty part you are
+playing, master!"
+
+But he had hardly been absent two days when Marie, the Countess's French
+maid, appeared with the scented letter, or it arrived in the mail, where
+it stood out scandalously among the other envelopes of the master's
+correspondence.
+
+"Curse that woman!" exclaimed Renovales, hastening to hide the showy
+note. "What a lack of prudence. One of these fine days, Josephina will
+discover these letters."
+
+Cotoner, in his blind devotion to his idol whom he considered
+irresistible, supposed that the Alberca woman was madly in love with the
+master and shook his head sadly.
+
+"This will have a bad end, Mariano. You ought to break with her. The
+peace of your home! You are piling up trouble for yourself."
+
+The letters were always alike; endless complaints at his short absences.
+"_Cher maître_, I could not sleep last night, thinking of you," and she
+ended with "Your admirer and good friend, Coquillerosse," a _nom de
+guerre_ she had adopted for her correspondence with the artist.
+
+She wrote in a disordered style, at unusual hours, just as her fancy
+and her abnormal nervous system prompted. Sometimes she dated her letter
+at three in the morning, she could not sleep, got out of bed and to pass
+the sleepless hours filled four sheets of paper (with the facility of
+despair) in her fine hand, addressed to her good friend, talking to him
+of the count, of what her acquaintances said, telling him the latest
+gossip about the Court, lamenting the doctor's coldness. At other times,
+there were only four brief, desperate lines. "Come at once, dear
+Mariano. A very urgent matter."
+
+And the master, leaving his tasks early in the morning, ran to the
+countess' house, where she received him still in bed in her fragrant
+chamber which the gentleman with honorary crosses had not entered for
+many years.
+
+The painter came in in great anxiety, disturbed at the possibility of
+some terrible event, and Concha, tossing about between the embroidered
+sheets, tucking in the golden wisps of hair that escaped from her lace
+cap, talked and talked, as incoherently as a bird sings, as if the
+silence of the night had hopelessly confused her ideas. A great idea had
+occurred to her; during her sleep she had thought out an absolutely
+original scientific theory that would delight Monteverde. And she
+explained it earnestly to the master, who nodded his approval without
+understanding a word, thinking it was a pity to see such an attractive
+mouth uttering such follies.
+
+At other times she would talk to him about the speech she was preparing
+for a fair of the Woman's Association, the _magnum opus_ of her
+presidency; and drawing her ivory arms from under the sheet with a
+calmness that dazed Renovales, she would pick up from the nearby table
+some sheets of paper scribbled with pencil, and ask her friend to tell
+her who was the greatest painter in the world, for she had left a blank
+to fill in with this name.
+
+After an hour of incessant chatter while the artist watched her silently
+with greedy eyes, he finally came to the urgent matter, the desperate
+summons that had made the master leave his work. It was always an affair
+of life or death, compromises in which her honor was at stake. Sometimes
+she wanted him to paint some little thing on the fan of a foreign lady
+who was eager to take away from Spain some souvenir of the great master.
+The person in question had asked her at a diplomatic soirée the night
+before, knowing her friendship with Renovales. Or she had sent for him
+to ask him for some little sketch, a daub, any one of the little things
+that lay in the corner of his studio for a bazaar of the Association for
+the Benefit of Fallen Women, whom the countess and her friends were very
+eager to rescue.
+
+"Don't put on such a wry face, master, don't be stingy. You must expect
+to sacrifice something for friendship. Everybody thinks that I have
+great power over the famous artist, and they ask me favors and are
+constantly getting me into difficulty. They don't know you, they don't
+realize how perverse, how rebellious you are, you horrid man!"
+
+And she let him kiss her hand, smiling condescendingly. But as she felt
+the touch of his lips and his beard on her arm she struggled to free
+herself, half-laughing, half-trembling.
+
+"Let me go, Mariano! I'll scream! I'll call Marie! I won't receive you
+again in my bedroom. You aren't worthy of being trusted. Quiet, master,
+or I'll tell Josephina everything."
+
+Sometimes when Renovales came, full of alarm at her summons, he found
+her pale, with dark circles under her eyes, as if she had spent the
+night weeping. When she saw the master her tears began to flow again. It
+was pique, deep pain at Monteverde's coldness. He passed whole days
+without seeing her; he even went so far as to say that women are a
+hindrance to serious study. Oh, these scholars! And she, madly devoted
+to him, submissive as a slave, putting up with his whimsical moods,
+worshiping him with that ardent passion of a woman who is older than her
+lover and appreciates her own inferiority!
+
+"Oh, Renovales. Never fall in love. It is hell. You do not know the
+happiness you enjoy in not understanding these things."
+
+But the master, indifferent to her tears, enraged by her confidences,
+walked up and down gesticulating, just as if he were in his studio, and
+he spoke to the countess with brutal frankness, as he would to a woman
+who had revealed all her secrets and weaknesses. What difference did all
+that make to him? Had she sent for him to tell him such stuff? She
+grieved with childish sighs from the bed. She was alone in the world,
+she was very unhappy. The master was her only friend; he was her father,
+her brother. To whom could she tell her troubles if not to him? And
+taking courage at the painter's silence who finally was moved by her
+tears, she recovered her boldness and expressed her wish. He must go to
+Monteverde, give him a good, heart-to-heart lecture, so that he would be
+good and not make her suffer. The doctor respected him highly; he was
+one of his greatest admirers; she was certain that a few words of the
+master would be enough to bring him back like a lamb. He must show him
+that she was not alone, that she had some one to defend her, that no one
+could make sport of her with impunity.
+
+But before she finished her request, the painter was walking around the
+bed waving his arms, cursing in the violence of his excitement.
+
+"That's the last straw! One of these days you'll be asking me to shine
+his boots. Are you mad, woman? What are you thinking of? You have enough
+accommodating people already in the count. Don't drag me into it!"
+
+But she rolled over in bed, weeping disconsolately. She had no friends
+left! The master was like the others; if he would not accede to her
+requests, their friendship was over. All talk, oaths, and then not the
+least sacrifice!
+
+Suddenly she sat up, frowning angrily with the coldness of an offended
+queen. She knew him at last, she had made a mistake in counting on him.
+And as Renovales, confused at her anger, tried to offer excuse, she
+interrupted him haughtily.
+
+"Will you, or will you not? One, two----"
+
+Yes, he would do what she wanted; he had sunk so low that it did not
+matter if he went a little farther. He would lecture the doctor,
+throwing in his face his stupidity in scorning such happiness,--he said
+this with all his heart, his voice trembling with envy. What else did
+his fair despot want? She might ask without fear. If it was necessary he
+would challenge the count, with all his decorations, to single combat
+and would kill him so that she might be free to join her little doctor.
+
+"You joker," cried Concha, smiling at her triumph. "You are as nice as
+can be but you are very perverse. Come here, you horrid man."
+
+And lifting a lock of his heavy hair with her hand, she kissed him on
+the forehead, laughing at the start the painter gave at her caress. He
+felt his legs trembling, then his arms strove to embrace the warm,
+scented body, that seemed to slip from him in its delicate covering.
+
+"It was on the forehead," cried Concha in protest. "A sister's caress,
+Mariano. Stop! You're hurting me! I'll call!"
+
+And she called, realizing her weakness, seeing that she was on the point
+of being overcome in his fierce, masterly grasp. The electric bell
+sounded out of the maze of corridors and rooms and the door opened.
+Marie entered in a black dress with a white apron and a lace cap,
+discreet and silent. Her pale, smiling face, accustomed to see
+everything, to guess everything, did not reveal the slightest
+impression.
+
+The countess stretched out her hand to Renovales, calmly and
+affectionately, as if the entrance of the maid had found her saying
+good-by. She was sorry that he must go so soon, she would see him in the
+evening at the Opera.
+
+When the painter breathed the air of the street and jostled against the
+people, he felt as if he were awakening from a nightmare. He loathed
+himself. "You're showing off finely, master." His weakness that made him
+give in to all of the countess's demands, his base acquiescence in
+serving as an intermediary between her and her lover was sickening now.
+But he still felt the touch of her kiss on his forehead; he still
+breathed the atmosphere of the bedroom, heavy with perfume. Optimism
+overcame him. The affair was not going badly. However disagreeable the
+path was, it would lead to the realization of his desire.
+
+Many evenings Renovales went to the Opera, in obedience to Concha, who
+wanted to see him, and spent whole acts in the back of her box,
+conversing with her. Milita laughed at this change in the habits of her
+father, who used to go to bed early, so as to be able to work early in
+the morning. She was the one who, charged with the household affairs on
+account of her mother's constant illness, helped him to put on his
+dress-coat, and amid caresses and laughter combed his hair and adjusted
+his tie.
+
+"Papa, dear. I shouldn't know you, you're getting dissipated. When are
+you going to take me with you?"
+
+The artist excused himself seriously. It was a duty of his profession;
+artists must go into society. And as for taking her with him--some other
+time. He had to go alone this time, he had to talk to a great many
+people at the theater.
+
+Another change took place in him that provoked joyful comments on the
+part of Milita. Papa was getting young.
+
+Under irreverent trimmings, every week his hair became shorter, his
+beard diminished until only a light remnant remained of that tangled
+growth that gave him such a ferocious appearance. He did not want to
+look like other men, he must preserve the exterior that stamped him as
+an artist, so that people might not pass by the great Renovales without
+recognizing him. But he managed, while keeping within this desire, to
+approach and mingle with the fashionably dressed young men who
+frequented the countess's house.
+
+Other people too noticed this change. Students in the School of Fine
+Arts pointed him out from the gallery of the Opera-house or stopped on
+the sidewalk when they saw him at night, with a shining silk hat on his
+carefully trimmed hair and the expanse of shirt-front showing in his
+unbuttoned overcoat. The boys in their simple admiration imagined the
+great master thundering before his easel, as savage, fierce and
+intractable as Michael Angelo in his studio. And so when they saw him
+looking so differently, their eyes followed him enviously. "What a good
+time the master is having!" And they fancied the great ladies disputing
+over him, believing in perfect faith that no woman could resist a man
+who painted so well.
+
+His enemies, established artists but who were inferior to him, growled
+in their conversations. "Four-flusher, prig! He wasn't satisfied with
+making so much money and now he's playing the sport among the
+aristocracy, to pick up more portraits, to get all he can out of his
+signature."
+
+Cotoner, who sometimes stayed at the house in the evenings, to keep the
+ladies company, smiled sadly as he saw him leave, shaking his head.
+"It's bad. Mariano married too soon. Now that he is almost an old man,
+he's doing what he didn't do in his youth in his fever for work and
+glory." Many people were laughing at him already, divining his passion
+for the Alberca woman, that love without practical results, that made
+him live with her and Monteverde, acting as a good-natured mediator, a
+tolerant kindly father. When the famous master took off his mask of
+fierceness, he was a poor fellow about whom people talked with pity:
+they compared him with Hercules, dressed as a woman and spinning at the
+feet of his fair seducer.
+
+He had contracted a close friendship with Monteverde as a result of
+meeting him so often at the countess's. He no longer seemed foolish and
+unattractive. Renovales found in him something of the woman he loved and
+therefore his company was pleasing. He experienced that calm attraction,
+free from jealousy, that the husband of a mistress inspires in some men.
+They sat together at the theater, went to walk, conversing amiably, and
+the doctor frequently visited the artist's studio in the afternoon. This
+intimacy quite disconcerted people, for they could no longer tell with
+certainty which one was the Alberca woman's master and which the
+aspirant, even going so far as to believe that by a mutual agreement
+they all three lived in an ideal world.
+
+Monteverde admired the master and the latter, from his years and the
+superiority of his fame, assumed a paternal authority over him. He
+chided him when the countess complained of him.
+
+"Women!" the doctor would say with a bored expression. "You don't know
+what they are, master. They are only a hindrance to obstruct a man's
+career. You have been successful because you haven't let them dominate
+you because you are strong."
+
+And the poor strong man looked at Monteverde narrowly suspecting that he
+was making sport of him. He felt tempted to knock him down at the
+thought that the doctor scorned what he craved so keenly.
+
+Concha was more communicative with the master. She confessed to him what
+she had never dared to tell the doctor.
+
+"I tell you everything, Mariano. I cannot live without seeing you. Do
+you know what I think? The doctor is a sort of husband to me and you are
+the lover of my heart. Don't get excited; don't move or I'll call. I
+have spoken from my heart. I like you too much to think of the coarse
+things you want."
+
+Sometimes Renovales found her excited, nervous, speaking hoarsely,
+working her delicate fingers as if she wanted to scratch the air. They
+were terrible days that stirred up the whole house. Marie ran from room
+to room with her silent step, pursued by the ringing of the bells; the
+count slipped out of doors, like a frightened school-boy. Concha was
+bored, felt tired of everything, hated her life. When the painter
+appeared she would almost throw herself in his arms.
+
+"Take me out of here, Mariano; I'm tired of it, I'm dying. This life is
+killing me. My husband! He doesn't count. My friends! Fools that flay
+me as soon as I leave them. The doctor! as untrustworthy as a
+weathercock. All those men in my coterie, idiots. Master, have pity on
+me. Take me far away from here. You must know some other world; artists
+know everything."
+
+If she only was not such a familiar figure and if people only did not
+know the master in Madrid! In her nervous excitement she formed the
+wildest projects. She wanted to go out at night arm in arm with
+Renovales. She in a shawl and a kerchief over her head and he in a cape
+and a slouch hat. She would be his grisette; she would imitate the
+carriage and stride of a woman of the streets and they would go to the
+lowest districts like two night-hawks, and they would drink, would get
+into a brawl; he would defend her and they would go and spend the night
+in the police station.
+
+The painter looked shocked. What nonsense! But she insisted on her wish.
+
+"Laugh, master, open that great mouth of yours, you ugly thing. What is
+strange about what I said? You, with all your artist's hair and soft
+hats, are humdrum, a peaceful soul that is incapable of doing anything
+original in order to amuse yourself."
+
+When she thought of the couple they had seen one afternoon at Moncloa,
+she grew melancholy and sentimental. She, too, thought it would be fun
+to play the grisette, to walk arm in arm with the master as if she were
+a poor dressmaker and he a clerk, to end the trip in a picnic park, and
+he would give her a ride in the green swing, while she screamed with
+pleasure, as she went up and down with her skirts whirling around her
+feet. That was not foolishness. Just the simplest, most rustic pleasure!
+
+What a pity that they were both so well known. But what they would do,
+at least, was to disguise themselves some morning and go house-hunting
+in some low quarter, like the Rastro, as if they were a newly married
+couple. No one would recognize them in that part of Madrid. Agreed,
+master?
+
+And the master approved of everything. But the next day, Concha received
+him with confusion, biting her lips, until at last she broke out into
+hearty laughter at the recollection of the follies she had proposed.
+
+"How you must laugh at me! Some days I am perfectly crazy."
+
+Renovales did not conceal his assent. Yes, she was a trifle crazy. But
+with all her absurdities that made him alternate between hope and
+despair, she was more attractive, with her merry nonsense, and her
+transitory fits of anger, than the woman at home, implacable, silent,
+shunning him with ceaseless repugnance, but following him everywhere
+with her weeping, uncanny eyes, that became as cutting as steel, as soon
+as, out of sympathy or remorse, he gave the least evidence of
+familiarity.
+
+Oh, what a heavy, intolerable comedy! Before his daughter and his
+friends they had to talk to each other, and he, looking away, so that
+their eyes might not meet, scolded her gently, for not following the
+advice of the doctors. At first they had said it was neurasthenia, now
+it was diabetes, that was increasing the invalid's weakness. The master
+lamented the passive resistance she opposed to all their curative
+methods. She would follow them for a few days and then give them up with
+calm obstinacy. Her health was better than they thought: doctors could
+not cure her trouble.
+
+At night, when they entered the bed-chamber, a deathly silence fell on
+them; a leaden wall seemed to rise between their bodies. Here they no
+longer had to dissemble; they looked at each other face to face with
+silent hostility. Their life at night was sheer torment, but neither of
+them dared to change their mode of living. Their bodies could not leave
+the common bed; they found in it the places they had occupied for years.
+The habit of their wills subjected them to this room and its
+furnishings, with all its memories of the happy days of their youth.
+
+Renovales would fall into the deep sleep of a healthy man, tired out
+with work. His last thoughts were of the countess. He saw her in that
+vague mist that shrouds the portal of unconsciousness; he went to sleep,
+thinking of what he would say to her the next day. And his dreams were
+in keeping with his desires, for he saw her standing on a pedestal, in
+all the majesty of her nakedness, surpassing the marble of the most
+famous statues with the life of her flesh. When he awakened suddenly and
+stretched out his arms, he touched the body of his companion, small,
+stiff, burning with the fire of fever or icy with deathly cold. He
+divined that she was not asleep. She spent the nights without closing
+her eyes, but she did not move, as if all her strength was concentrated
+on something that she watched in the darkness with a hypnotic stare. She
+was like a corpse. There was the obstacle, the leaden weight, the
+phantom that checked the other woman when sometimes in a moment of
+hesitation, she leaned toward him, on the point of falling. And the
+terrible longing, the hideous thought came forth again in all its
+ugliness, announcing that it was not dead, that it had only hidden in
+the den of his brain, to rise more cruelly, more insolently.
+
+"Why not?" argued the rejected spirit, scattering in his fancy the
+golden dust of dreams.
+
+Love, fame, joy, a new artistic life, the rejuvenation of Doctor
+Faustus; he might expect everything, if kindly death would but come to
+help him, breaking the chain that bound him to sadness and sickness.
+
+But straightway a protest would arise within him. Though he lived like
+an infidel, he still had a religious soul that in the trying moments of
+his life led him to call on all the superhuman and miraculous powers as
+if they were under an inevitable obligation to come to his aid. "Lord,
+take this horrible thought from me. Take away this temptation. Don't let
+her die. Let her live, even if I perish."
+
+And the following day, filled with remorse, he would go to some doctors,
+friends of his, to consult with them minutely. He would stir up the
+house, organizing the cure according to a vast plan, distributing the
+medicines by hours. Then he would calmly return to his work, to his
+artistic prejudices, to his passionate longing, forgetting his
+determinations, thinking his wife's life was already saved.
+
+One afternoon after luncheon, she came into the studio and as the master
+looked at her, a sense of anxiety crept over him. It was a long time
+since Josephina had entered the room while he was working.
+
+She would not sit down; standing beside the easel she spoke slowly and
+meekly to her husband, without looking at him. Renovales was frightened
+at this simplicity.
+
+"Mariano, I have come to talk to you about our daughter."
+
+She wanted her to be married: it must come some day and the sooner, the
+better. She would die before long and she wanted to leave the world with
+the assurance that her daughter was well settled.
+
+Renovales felt forced to protest loudly with all the vehemence of a man
+who is not very sure of what he is saying. Shucks! Die! Why should she
+die? Her health was better now than it had ever been. The only thing she
+needed was to heed what the doctors told her.
+
+"I shall die before long," she repeated coldly; "I shall die and you
+will be left in peace. You know it."
+
+The painter tried to protest with a greater show of righteous
+indignation but his eyes met his wife's cold look. Then he contented
+himself with shrugging his shoulders in a resigned way. He did not want
+to argue; he must keep calm. He had to paint; he must go out that
+afternoon as usual on important business.
+
+"Very well, go ahead. Milita is going to be married. And to whom?"
+
+Led by his desire to maintain his authority, to take the lead, and
+because of his long-standing affection for his pupil, he hastened to
+speak of him. Was Soldevilla the suitor? A good boy with a future ahead
+of him. He worshiped Milita; his dejection when she treated him ill was
+pitiful. He would make an excellent husband.
+
+Josephina cut short her husband's chatter in a cold, contemptuous tone.
+
+"I don't want any painters for my daughter; you know it. Her mother has
+had enough of them."
+
+Milita was going to marry López de Sosa. The matter was already settled
+as far as she was concerned. The boy had spoken to her and, assured of
+her approval, would ask the father.
+
+"But does she love him? Do you think, Josephina, that these things can
+be arranged to suit you?"
+
+"Yes, she loves him; she is suited and wants to be married. Besides she
+is your daughter; she would accept the other man just as readily. What
+she wants is freedom, to get away from her mother, not to live in the
+unhappy atmosphere of my ill health. She doesn't say so, she doesn't
+even know that she thinks it, but I see through her."
+
+And as if, while she spoke of her daughter, she could not maintain the
+coldness she had toward her husband, she raised her hand to her eyes,
+to wipe away the silent tears.
+
+Renovales had recourse to rudeness in order to get out of the
+difficulty. It was all nonsense; an invention of her diseased mind. She
+ought to think of getting well and nothing else. What was she crying
+for! Did she want to marry her daughter to that automobile enthusiast?
+Well, get him. She did not want to? Well, let the girl stay at home.
+
+She was the one who had charge; no one was hindering her. Have the
+marriage as soon as possible? He was a mere cipher, and there was no
+reason for asking his advice. But steady, shucks! He had to work; he had
+to go out. And when he saw Josephina leaving the studio to weep
+somewhere else, he gave a snort of satisfaction, glad to have escaped
+from this difficult scene so successfully.
+
+López de Sosa was all right. An excellent boy! Or anyone else. He did
+not have time to give to such matters. Other things occupied his
+attention.
+
+He accepted his future son-in-law, and for several evenings he stayed at
+home to lend a sort of patriarchal air to the family parties. Milita and
+her betrothed talked at one end of the drawing-room. Cotoner, in the
+full bliss of digestion, strove with his jests to bring a faint smile to
+the face of the master's wife, but she stayed in the corner, shivering
+with cold. Renovales, in a smoking jacket, read the papers, soothed by
+the charming atmosphere of his quiet home. If the countess could only
+see him!
+
+One night the Alberca woman's name was mentioned in the drawing-room.
+Milita was running over from memory the list of friends of the
+family,--prominent ladies who would not fail to honor her approaching
+marriage with some magnificent present.
+
+"Concha won't come," said the girl. "It's a long time since she has been
+here."
+
+There was a painful silence, as if the countess's name chilled the
+atmosphere. Cotoner hummed a tune, pretending to be thinking of
+something else; López de Sosa began to look for a piece of music on the
+piano, talking about it to change the subject. He too seemed to be aware
+of the matter.
+
+"She doesn't come because she doesn't have to come," said Josephina from
+her corner. "Your father manages to see her every day, so that she won't
+forget us."
+
+Renovales raised his eyes in protest, as if he were awakening from a
+calm sleep. Josephina's gaze was fixed on him, not angry, but mocking
+and cruel. It reflected the same scorn with which she had wounded him on
+that unhappy night. She no longer said anything, but the master read in
+those eyes:
+
+"It is useless, my good man. You are mad over her, you pursue her, but
+she belongs to other men. I know her of old. I know all about it. Oh,
+how people laugh at you! How I laugh! How I scorn you!"
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The beginning of summer saw the wedding of the daughter of Renovales to
+López de Sosa. The papers published whole columns on the event, in
+which, according to some of the reporters, "the glory and splendor of
+art were united with the prestige of aristocracy and fortune." No one
+remembered now the nickname "Pickled Herring."
+
+The master Renovales did things well. He had only one daughter and he
+was eager to marry her with royal pomp; eager that Madrid and all Spain
+should know of the affair, that a ray of the glory her father had won
+might fall on Milita.
+
+The list of gifts was long. All the friends of the master, society
+ladies, political leaders, famous artists, and even royal personages,
+appeared in it with their corresponding presents. There was enough to
+fill a store. Both of the studios for visitors were converted into show
+rooms with countless tables loaded with articles, a regular fair of
+clothes and jewelry, that was visited by all of Milita's girl friends,
+even the most distant and forgotten, who came to congratulate her, pale
+with envy.
+
+The Countess of Alberca, too, sent a huge, showy gift, as if she did not
+want to remain unnoticed among the friends of the house. Doctor
+Monteverde was represented by a modest remembrance, though he had no
+other connection with the family than his friendship with the master.
+
+The wedding was celebrated at the house, where one of the studios was
+converted into a chapel. Cotoner had a hand in everything that concerned
+the ceremony, delighted to be able to show his influence with the people
+of the Church.
+
+Renovales took charge of the arrangements of the altar, eager to display
+the touch of an artist even in the least details. On a background of
+ancient tapestries he placed an old triptych, a medieval cross; all the
+articles of worship which filled his studio as decorations, cleaned now
+from dust and cobwebs, recovered for a few moments their religious
+importance.
+
+A variegated flood of flowers filled the master's house. Renovales
+insisted on having them everywhere; he had sent to Valencia and Murcia
+for them in reckless quantities; they hung on the door-frames, and along
+the cornices; they lay in huge clusters on the tables and in the
+corners. They even swung in pagan garlands from one column of the façade
+to another, arousing the curiosity of the passers-by, who crowded
+outside of the iron fence,--women in shawls, boys with great baskets on
+their heads who stood in open-mouthed wonder before the strange sight,
+waiting to see what was going on in that unusual house, following the
+coming and going of the servants who carried in music stands and two
+base viols, hidden in varnished cases.
+
+Early in the morning Renovales was hurrying about with two ribbons
+across his shirt front and a constellation of golden, flashing stars
+covering one whole side of his coat. Cotoner, too, had put on the
+insignia of his various Papal Orders. The master looked at himself in
+all the mirrors with considerable satisfaction, admiring equally his
+friend. They must look handsome; a celebration like this they would
+never see again. He plied his companion with incessant questions, to
+make sure that nothing had been overlooked in the preparations. The
+master Pedraza, a great friend of Renovales, was to conduct the
+orchestra. They had gathered all the best players in Madrid, for the
+most part from the Opera. The choir was a good one, but the only notable
+artists they had been able to secure were people who made the capital
+their residence. The season was not the best; the theaters were closed.
+
+Cotoner continued to explain the measures he had taken. Promptly at ten
+the Nuncio, Monsignore Orlandi,--a great friend of his--would arrive; a
+handsome chap, still young, whom he had met in Rome when he was attached
+to the Vatican. A word on Cotoner's part was all that was necessary to
+persuade him to do them the honor of marrying the children. Friends are
+useful at times! And the painter of the popes, proud of his sudden rise
+to importance, went from room to room, arranging everything, followed by
+the master who approved of his orders.
+
+In the studio, the orchestra and the table for the luncheon were set.
+The other rooms were for the guests. Was anything forgotten? The two
+artists looked at the altar with its dark tapestries, and its
+candelabra, crosses and reliquaries, of dull, old gold that seemed to
+absorb the light rather than reflect it. Nothing was lacking. Ancient
+fabrics and garlands of flowers covered the walls, hiding the master's
+studies in color, unfinished pictures, profane works that could not be
+tolerated in the discreet, harmonious atmosphere of that chapel-like
+room. The floor was partly covered with costly rugs, Persian and
+Moorish. In front of the altar were two praying desks and behind them,
+for the more important guests, all the luxurious chairs of the studio:
+white armchairs of the 18th Century, embroidered with pastoral scenes,
+Greek settles, benches of carved oak and Venetian chairs with high
+backs, the bizarre confusion of an antique shop.
+
+Suddenly Cotoner started back as if he were shocked. How careless! A
+fine thing it would have been if he had not noticed it! At the end of
+the studio, opposite the altar that screened a large part of the window,
+and directly in its light, stood a huge, white, naked woman. It was the
+"Venus de Medici," a superb piece of marble that Renovales had brought
+from Italy. Its pagan beauty in its dazzling whiteness seemed to
+challenge the deathly yellow of the religious objects that filled the
+other end of the studio. Accustomed to see it, the two artists had
+passed in front of it several times without noticing its nakedness that
+seemed more insolent and triumphant now that the studio was converted
+into an oratory.
+
+Cotoner began to laugh.
+
+"What a scandal if we hadn't seen it! What would the ladies have said!
+My friend Orlandi would have thought that you did it on purpose, for he
+considers you rather lax morally. Come, my boy, let's get something to
+cover up this lady."
+
+After much searching in the disorder of the studio, they found a piece
+of Indian cotton, scrawled with elephants and lotus flowers; they
+stretched it over the goddess's head, so that it covered her down to her
+feet and there it stood, like a mystery, a riddle for the guests.
+
+They were beginning to arrive. Outside of the house, at the fence
+sounded the stamping of the horses, the slam of doors as they closed. In
+the distance rumbled other carriages, drawing nearer every minute. The
+swish of silk on the floor sounded in the hall, and the servants ran
+back and forth, receiving wraps and putting numbers on them, as at the
+theater, to stow them away in the parlor that had been converted into a
+coat-room. Cotoner directed the servants, smooth shaven or wearing
+side-whiskers, and clad in faded dress-suits. Renovales meanwhile was
+wreathed in smiles, bowing graciously, greeting the ladies who came in
+their black or white mantillas, grasping the hands of the men, some of
+whom wore brilliant uniforms.
+
+The master felt elated at this procession which ceremoniously passed
+through his drawing-rooms and studios. In his ears, the swish of skirts,
+the movement of fans, the greetings, the praise of his good taste
+sounded like caressing music. Everyone came with the same satisfaction
+in seeing and being seen, which people reveal on a first night at the
+theater or at some brilliant reception. Good music, presence of the
+Nuncio, preparations for the luncheon which they seemed to sniff
+already, and besides, the certainty of seeing their names in print the
+next day, perhaps of having their picture in some illustrated magazine.
+Emilia Renovales' wedding was an event.
+
+Among the crowd of people that continued to pour in were seen several
+young men, hastily holding up their cameras. They were going to have
+snap-shots! Those who retained some bitterness against the artist,
+remembering how dearly they had paid him for a portrait, now pardoned
+him generously and excused his robbery. There was an artist that lived
+like a gentleman! And Renovales went from one side to another, shaking
+hands, bowing, talking incoherently, not knowing in which direction to
+turn. For a moment, while he stood in the hall, he saw a bit of sunlit
+garden, covered with flowers and beyond a fence a black mass: the
+admiring, smiling throng. He breathed the odor of roses and subtle
+perfumes, and felt the rapture of optimism flood his breast. Life was a
+great thing. The poor rabble, crowded together outside, made him recall
+with pride the blacksmith's son. Heavens, how he had risen! He felt
+grateful to those wealthy, idle people who supported his well-being; he
+made every effort so that they might lack nothing, and overwhelmed
+Cotoner with his suggestions. The latter turned on the master with the
+arrogance of one who is in authority. His place was inside, with the
+guests. He need not mind him, for he knew his duties. And turning his
+back on Mariano, he issued orders to the servants and showed the way to
+the new arrivals, recognizing their station at a glance. "This way,
+gentlemen."
+
+It was a group of musicians and he led them through a servants' hallway
+so that they might get to their stands without having to mingle with the
+guests. Then he turned to scold a crowd of bakerboys, who were late in
+bringing the last shipments of the luncheon and advanced through the
+assemblage, raising the great, wicker baskets over the heads of the
+ladies.
+
+Cotoner left his place when he saw rising from the stairway a plush hat
+with gold tassels over a pale face, then a silk cassock with purple sash
+and buttons, flanked by two others, black and modest.
+
+_"Oh, monsignore! Monsignore Orlandi! Va bene? Va bene?"_
+
+He kissed his hand with a profound reverence, and after inquiring
+anxiously for his health, as if he had not seen him the day before,
+started off, opening a passage way in the crowded drawing-rooms.
+
+"The Nuncio! The Nuncio of His Holiness!"
+
+The men, with the decorum of decent persons, who know how to show
+respect for dignitaries, stopped laughing and talking to the ladies, and
+bent forward, as he passed, to take that delicate, pale hand, which
+looked like the hand of a lady of the olden days, and kiss the huge
+stone of its ring. The ladies, with moist eyes, looked for a moment at
+Monsignor Orlandi,--a distinguished prelate, a diplomat of the Church,
+a noble of the Old Roman nobility,--tall, thin, pale as chalk, with
+black hair and imperious eyes in which there was an intense flash of
+flame.
+
+He moved with the haughty grace of a bull-fighter. The lips of the women
+rested eagerly on his hand, while he gazed with enigmatical eyes at the
+line of graceful necks bowed before him. Cotoner continued ahead,
+opening a passage, proud of his part, elated at the respect which his
+illustrious friend inspired. What a wonderful thing religion was!
+
+He accompanied him to the sacristy, which once was the dressing-room for
+the models. He remained outside, discreetly, but every other minute some
+one of the Nuncio's attendants came out in search of him,--sprightly
+young fellows with a feminine carriage and a faint suggestion of perfume
+about them, who looked on the artist with respect, believing he was an
+important personage. They called to Signor Cotoner, asking him to help
+them find something Monsignor had sent the day before, and the Bohemian,
+in order to avoid further requests, finally went into the dressing-room,
+to assist in the sacred toilette of his illustrious friend.
+
+In the drawing-rooms the company suddenly eddied, the conversation
+ceased, and a throng of people, after crowding in front of one of the
+doors, opened to leave a passage.
+
+The bride, leaning on the arm of a distinguished gentleman, who was the
+best man, entered, clad in white, ivory white her dress, snow white her
+veil, pearl white her flowers. The only bright color she showed was the
+healthy pink of her cheeks and the red of her lips. She smiled to her
+friends, not bashfully nor timidly, but with an air of satisfaction at
+the festivity and the fact that she was its principal object. After her
+came the groom, giving his arm to his new mother, the painter's wife,
+smaller than ever in her party-gown that was too large for her, dazed by
+this noisy event that broke the painful calm of her existence.
+
+And the father? Renovales was missing in the formal entrance; he was
+very busy attending to the guests; a gracious smile, half hidden behind
+a fan, detained him at one end of the drawing-room. He had felt some one
+touch his shoulder and, turning around, he saw the solemn Count of
+Alberca with his wife on his arm. The count had congratulated him on the
+appearance of the studios; all very artistic. The countess had
+congratulated him too, in a jesting tone, on the importance of this
+event in his life. The moment of retiring, of saying good-by to youth
+had come.
+
+"They are shelving you, dear master. Pretty soon they will be calling
+you grandfather."
+
+She laughed with pleasure at the flush of pain these pitying words
+caused him. But before Mariano could answer the countess, he felt
+himself dragged away by Cotoner. What was he doing there? The bride and
+groom were at the altar; Monsignor was beginning the service; the
+father's chair was still vacant. And Renovales passed a tiresome
+half-hour following the ceremonies of the prelate with an absent-minded
+glance. Far away in the last of the studios, the stringed instruments
+struck a loud chord and a melody of earthly mysticism poured forth from
+room to room in the atmosphere laden with the perfume of crumpled roses.
+
+Then a sweet voice, supported by others more harsh, began a prayer that
+had the voluptuous rhythm of an Italian serenade. A passing wave of
+sentimentality seemed to stir the guests. Cotoner, who stood near the
+altar, in case Monsignor should need something, felt moved to tenderness
+by the music, by the sight of that distinguished gathering, by the
+dramatic gravity with which the Roman prelate conducted the ceremonies
+of his profession. Seeing Milita so fair, kneeling, with her eyes
+lowered under her snowy veil, the poor Bohemian blinked to keep back the
+tears. He felt just as if he were marrying his own daughter. He who had
+not had one!
+
+Renovales sat up, seeking the countess's eyes above the white and black
+mantillas. Sometimes he found them resting on him with a mocking
+expression, at other times he saw them seeking Monteverde in the crowd
+of gentlemen that filled the doorway.
+
+There was one moment when the painter paid attention to the ceremony.
+How long it was! The music had ceased; Monsignor, with his back to the
+altar, advanced several steps toward the newly married couple, holding
+out his hands, as if he were going to speak to them. There was a
+profound hush and the voice of the Italian began to sound in the silence
+with a sing-song mellowness, hesitating over some words, supplying them
+with others of his own language. He explained to the man and wife their
+duties and expatiated, with oratorical fire, in his praises of their
+families. He spoke little of him; he was a representative of the upper
+classes, from which rise the leaders of men; he knew his duties. She was
+the descendant of a great painter whose fame was universal, of an
+artist.
+
+As he mentioned art, the Roman prelate was fired with enthusiasm, as if
+he were speaking of his own stock, with the deep interest of a man whose
+life had been spent among the splendid half-pagan decorations of the
+Vatican. "Next to God, there is nothing like art." And after this
+statement, with which he attributed to the bride a nobility superior to
+that of many of the people who were watching her, he eulogized the
+virtues of her parents. In admirable terms, he commended their pure love
+and Christian fidelity, ties with which they approached together,
+Renovales and his wife, the portal of old age and which surely would
+accompany them till death. The painter bowed his head, afraid that he
+would meet Concha's mocking glance. He could hear Josephina's stifled
+sobs, with her face hidden in the lace of her mantilla. Cotoner felt
+called upon to second the prelate's praises with discreet words of
+approval.
+
+Then the orchestra noisily began Mendelssohn's "Wedding March"; the
+chairs ground on the floor as they were pushed back; the ladies rushed
+toward the bride and a buzz of congratulations, shouted over the heads
+of the company, and of noisy efforts to be the first to reach her,
+drowned out the vibration of the strings and the heavy blast of the
+brasses. Monsignor, whose importance disappeared as soon as the ceremony
+was over, made his way with his attendants to the dressing-room, passing
+unnoticed through the throng. The bride smiled with a resigned air amid
+the circle of feminine arms that squeezed her and friendly lips that
+showered kisses on her. She expressed surprise at the simplicity of the
+ceremony. Was that all there was to it? Was she really married?
+
+Cotoner saw Josephina making her way across the room, looking
+impatiently among the shoulders of the guests, her face tinged with a
+hectic flush. His instinct of a master of ceremonies warned him that
+danger was at hand.
+
+"Take my arm, Josephina. Let's go outside for a breath of fresh air.
+This is unbearable."
+
+She took his arm but instead of following him, she dragged him among the
+people who crowded around her daughter until at last, seeing the
+Countess of Alberca, she stopped. Her prudent friend trembled. Just what
+he thought--she was looking for the other woman.
+
+"Josephina, Josephina! Remember that this is Milita's wedding!"
+
+But his advice was useless. Concha, seeing her old friend, ran toward
+her. "Dear! So long since I've seen you! A kiss--another." And she
+kissed her effusively. The little woman made one attempt to resist; but
+then she submitted, dejectedly, smiling sadly, overcome by habit and
+training. She returned her kisses coldly with an indifferent expression.
+She did not hate Concha. If her husband did not go to her, he would go
+to some one else; the real, the dangerous enemy was within him.
+
+The bride and groom, arm in arm, smiling and somewhat fatigued by the
+violent congratulations, passed through the groups of people and
+disappeared, followed by the last chords of the triumphal march.
+
+The music ceased, and the company crowded around the tables covered with
+bottles, cold meats and confections, behind which the servants hurried
+in confusion, not knowing how to serve so many a black glove or white
+hand that seized the gold-bordered plates and the little pearl knives
+crossed on the dishes. It was a smiling, well-bred riot, but they pushed
+and trod on the ladies' trains and used their elbows, as if, now the
+ceremony was over, they were all gnawed with hunger.
+
+Plate in hand, stifled and breathless after the assault, they scattered
+through the studios, eating even on the very altar. There were not
+servants enough for so great a gathering; the young men, seizing bottles
+of champagne, ran in all directions, filling the ladies' glasses. Amid
+great merriment the tables were pillaged. The servants covered them
+hastily and with no less speed the pyramids of sandwiches, fruits, and
+sweets came down and the bottles disappeared. The corks popped two and
+three at a time, in ceaseless crossfire.
+
+Renovales ran about like a servant, loaded with plates and glasses,
+going back and forth from the crowded tables to the corners where some
+of his friends were seated. The Alberca woman assumed the airs of a
+mistress; she made him go and come with constant requests.
+
+On one of these trips he ran into his beloved pupil, Soldevilla. He had
+not seen him for a long time. He looked rather gloomy, but he found some
+consolation in looking at his waistcoat, a novelty that had made a "hit"
+among the younger set; of black velvet with embroidered flowers and gold
+buttons.
+
+The master felt that he ought to console him,--poor boy! For the first
+time he gave him to understand that he was "in the secret."
+
+"I wanted something else for my daughter, but it was impossible. Work,
+Soldevilla! Courage! We must not have any mistress except painting."
+
+And content to have delivered this kindly consolation, he returned to
+the countess.
+
+At noon, the reception ended. López de Sosa and his wife reappeared in
+traveling costume; he in a fox-skin overcoat, in spite of the heat, a
+leather cap and high leggings; she in a long mackintosh that reached to
+her feet and a turban of thick veils that hid her face, like a fugitive
+from a harem.
+
+At the door, the groom's latest acquisition was waiting for them--an
+eighty horse-power car that he had bought for his wedding trip. They
+intended to spend the night some hundred miles away in a corner of old
+Castile, at an estate inherited from his father which he had never
+visited.
+
+A modern wedding, as Cotoner said, a honeymoon at full speed, without
+any witness except the discreet back of the chauffeur. The next day they
+expected to start for a tour of Europe. They would go as far as Berlin;
+perhaps farther.
+
+López de Sosa shook hands with his friends vigorously, like a proud
+explorer, and went out to look over his car, before leaving. Milita
+submitted to her friends' caresses, carrying away her mother's tears on
+her veil.
+
+"Good-by, good-by, my daughter!"
+
+And the wedding was over.
+
+Renovales and his wife were left alone. The absence of their daughter
+seemed to increase the solitude, widening the distance between them.
+They looked at each other hostilely, reserved and gloomy, without a
+sound to break the silence and serve as a bridge to enable them to
+exchange a few words. Their life was going to be like that of convicts,
+who hate each other and walk side by side, bound with the same chain, in
+tormenting union, forced to share the same necessities of life.
+
+As a remedy for this isolation that filled them with misgivings they
+both thought of having the newly married couple come to live with them.
+The house was large, there was room for them all. But Milita objected,
+gently but firmly, and her husband seconded her. He must live near his
+coach house, his garage. Besides, where could he, without shocking his
+father-in-law, put his collection of treasures, his museum of bull's
+heads and bloody suits of famous toreadors, which was the envy of his
+friends and an object of great curiosity for many foreigners.
+
+When the painter and his wife were alone again, it seemed as though they
+had aged many years in a month; they found their house more huge, more
+deserted,--with the echoing silence of abandoned monuments. Renovales
+wanted Cotoner to move to the house, but the Bohemian declined with a
+sort of fear. He would eat with them; he would spend a great part of the
+day at their house; they were all the family he had; but he wanted to
+keep his freedom; he could not give up his numerous friends.
+
+Well along in the summer, the master induced his wife to take her usual
+vacation. They would go to a little known Andalusian watering-place, a
+fishing village where the artist had painted many of his pictures. He
+was tired of Madrid. The Countess of Alberca was at Biarritz with her
+husband. Doctor Monteverde had gone there too, dragged along by her.
+
+They made the trip, but it did not last more than a month. The master
+hardly finished two canvases. Josephina felt ill. When they reached the
+watering-place, her health improved greatly. She appeared more cheerful;
+for hours at a time she would sit in the sand, getting tanned in the
+sun, craving the warmth with the eagerness of an invalid, watching the
+sea with her expressionless eyes, near her husband who painted,
+surrounded by a semicircle of wretched people. She sang, smiled
+sometimes to the master, as if she forgave him everything and wanted to
+forget, but suddenly a shadow of sadness had fallen on her; her body
+seemed paralyzed once more by weakness. She conceived an aversion to the
+bright beach, and the life of the open air, with that repugnance for
+light and noise which sometimes seizes invalids and makes them hide in
+the seclusion of their beds. She sighed for her gloomy house in Madrid.
+There she was better, she felt stronger, surrounded with memories; she
+thought she was safer from the black danger that hovered about her.
+Besides, she longed to see her daughter. Renovales must telegraph to his
+son-in-law. They had toured Europe long enough; it was time for them to
+come back; she must see Milita.
+
+They returned to Madrid at the end of September, and a little later the
+newly married couple joined them, delighted with their trip and still
+more delighted to be at home again. López de Sosa had been greatly vexed
+by meeting people wealthier than he, who humiliated him with their
+luxury. His wife wanted to live among friends who would admire her
+prosperity. She was grieved at the lack of curiosity in those countries
+where no one paid any attention to her.
+
+With the presence of her daughter, Josephina seemed to recover her
+spirits. The latter frequently came in the afternoon, dressed in her
+showy gowns, which were the more striking at that season when most of
+the society folk were away from Madrid, and took her mother to ride in
+the motor in the suburbs of the capital, sweeping along the dusty roads.
+Sometimes, too, Josephina summoning her courage, overcame her bodily
+weakness and went to her daughter's house, a second-story apartment in
+the Calle de Olòzaga, admiring the modern comforts that surrounded her.
+
+The master seemed to be bored. He had no portraits to paint; it was
+impossible for him to do anything in Madrid while he was still saturated
+with the radiant sun and the brilliant colors of the Mediterranean
+shore. Besides, he missed the company of Cotoner, who had gone to a
+historic little town in Castile, where with a comic pride he received
+the honors due to genius, living in the palace of the prelate and
+ruining several pictures in the Cathedral by an infamous restoration.
+
+His loneliness made Renovales remember the Alberca woman with all the
+greater longing. She, on her part, with a constant succession of letters
+reminded the painter of her every day. She had written to him while he
+was at the little village on the coast and now she wrote to him in
+Madrid, asking him what he was doing, taking an interest in the most
+insignificant details of his daily life and telling him about her own
+with an exuberance that filled pages and pages, till every envelope
+contained a veritable history.
+
+The painter followed her life minute by minute, as if he were with her.
+She talked to him about Darwin, concealing Monteverde under this name;
+she complained of his coldness, of his indifference, of the air of
+commiseration with which he submitted to her love. "Oh, master, I am
+very unhappy!" At other times her letter was triumphant, optimistic; she
+seemed radiant, and the painter read her satisfaction between the lines;
+he divined her intoxication after those daring meetings in her own
+house, defying the count's blindness. And she told him everything, with
+shameless, maddening familiarity, as if he were a woman, as if he could
+not be moved in the least by her confidences.
+
+In her last letter, Concha seemed mad with joy. The count was at San
+Sebastian, to take leave of the king and queen,--an important diplomatic
+mission. Although he was not "in line," they had chosen him as a
+representative of the most distinguished Spanish nobility to take the
+Fleece to a petty prince of a little German state. The poor gentleman,
+since he could not win the golden distinction, had to be contented with
+taking it to other men with great pomp. Renovales saw the countess's
+hand in all this. Her letters were radiant with joy. She was going to be
+left alone with Darwin, for the noble gentleman would be absent for a
+long time. Married life with the doctor, free from risk and disturbance!
+
+Renovales read these letters merely out of curiosity; they no longer
+awakened in him an intense or lasting interest. He had grown accustomed
+to his situation as a confidant; his desire was cooled by the frankness
+of that woman who put herself in his power, telling him all her secrets.
+Her body was the only thing he did not know; her inner life he possessed
+as did none of her lovers and he began to feel tired of this possession.
+When he finished reading these letters, he would always think the same
+thing. "She is mad. What do I care about her secrets?"
+
+A week passed without any news from Biarritz. The papers spoke of the
+trip of the eminent Count of Alberca. He was already in Germany with all
+his retinue, getting ready to put the noble lambskin around the princely
+shoulders. Renovates smiled knowingly, without emotion, without envy, as
+he thought of the countess's silence. She had a great deal to take up
+her time, no doubt, since she was left alone.
+
+Suddenly one afternoon he heard from her in the most unexpected manner.
+He was going out of his house, just at sunset, to take a walk on the
+heights of the Hippodrome along the Canalillo to view Madrid from the
+hill, when at the gate a messenger boy in a red coat handed him a
+letter. The painter started with surprise on recognizing Concha's
+handwriting. Four hasty, excited lines. She had just arrived that
+afternoon on the French express with her maid, Marie. She was alone at
+home. "Come, hurry. Serious news. I am dying." And the master hurried,
+though the announcement of her death did not make much impression on
+him. It was probably some trifle. He was used to the countess's
+exaggeration.
+
+The spacious house of the Albercas was dark, dusty and echoing like all
+deserted buildings. The only servant who remained was the concierge. His
+children were playing beside the steps as if they did not know that the
+lady of the house had returned. Upstairs the furniture was wrapped in
+gray covers, the chandeliers were veiled with cheese-cloth, the house
+and glass of the mirrors were dull and lifeless under the coating of
+dust. Marie opened the door for him and led the way through the dark,
+musty rooms, the windows closed, and the curtains down, without any
+light except what came through the cracks.
+
+In the reception hall he ran into several trunks, still unpacked,
+dropped and forgotten in the haste of arrival.
+
+At the end of this pilgrimage, almost feeling his way through the
+deserted house, he saw a spot of light, the door of the countess's
+bedroom, the only room that was alive, lighted up by the glow of the
+setting sun. Concha was there beside the window, buried in a chair, her
+brow contracted, her glance lost in the distance, her face tinged with
+the orange of the dying light.
+
+Seeing the painter she sprang to her feet, stretched out her arms and
+ran toward him, as if she were fleeing from pursuit.
+
+"Mariano! Master! He has gone! He has left me forever!"
+
+Her voice was a wail; she threw her arms around him, burying her face in
+his shoulder, wetting his beard with the tears that began to fall from
+her eyes drop by drop.
+
+Renovales, under the impulse of his surprise, repelled her gently and he
+made her go back to her chair.
+
+"Who has gone away? Who is it? Darwin?"
+
+Yes; he. It was all over. The countess could hardly talk; a painful sob
+interrupted her words. She was enraged to see herself deserted and her
+pride trampled on; her whole body trembled. He had fled at the height of
+their happiness, when she thought that she was surest of him, when they
+enjoyed a liberty they had never known. He was tired of her; he still
+loved her,--as he said in a letter,--but he wanted to be free to
+continue his studies. He was grateful to her for her kindness, surfeited
+with so much love, and he fled to go into seclusion abroad and become a
+great man, not thinking any more about women. This was the purpose of
+the brief lines he had sent her on his disappearance. A lie, an absolute
+lie! She saw something else. The wretch had run away with a cocotte who
+was the cynosure of all eyes on the beach at Biarritz. An ugly thing,
+who had some vulgar charm about her, for all the men raved over her.
+That young "sport" was tired of respectable people. He probably was
+offended because she had not secured him the professorship, because he
+had not been made a deputy. Heavens! How was she to blame for her
+failure? Had she not done everything she could?
+
+"Oh, Mariano. I know I am going to die. This is not love; I no longer
+care for him. I detest him! It is rage, indignation. I would like to get
+hold of the little whipper-snapper, to choke him. Think of all the
+foolish things I have done for him. Heavens! Where were my eyes!"
+
+As soon as she discovered that she had been deserted, her only thought
+was to find her good friend, her counselor, her "brother," to go to
+Madrid, to see Renovales and tell him everything, everything! impelled
+by the necessity of confessing to him even secrets whose memory made her
+blush.
+
+She had no one in the world who loved her disinterestedly, no one except
+the master, and with the panicky haste of a traveler who is lost at
+night, in the midst of a desert, she had run to him, seeking warmth and
+protection.
+
+This longing for protection came back to her in the master's presence.
+She went to him again, clinging to him, sobbing in hysteric fear, as if
+she were surrounded by dangers.
+
+"Master, you are all I have; you are my life! You won't ever leave me,
+will you? You will always be my brother?"
+
+Renovales, bewildered at the unexpectedness of this scene, at the
+submission of that woman who had always repelled him and now suddenly
+clung to him, unable to stand unless her arms were clasped about his
+neck, tried to free himself from her arms.
+
+After the first surprise, the old coldness came over him. He was
+irritated at this proud despair that was another's work.
+
+The woman he had longed for, the woman of his dreams came to him, seemed
+to give herself to him with hysteric sobs, eager to overwhelm him,
+perhaps without realizing what she was doing in the thoughtlessness of
+her abnormal state; but he pushed her back, with sudden terror,
+hesitating and timid in the face of the deed, pained that the
+realization of his dreams came, not voluntarily but under the influence
+of disappointment and desertion.
+
+Concha pressed close to him, eager to feel the protection of his
+powerful body.
+
+"Master! My friend! You won't leave me! You are so good!"
+
+And closing her eyes that no longer wept, she kissed his strong neck,
+and looked up with her eyes still moist, seeking his face in the shadow.
+They could hardly see each other; the room was dim with mysterious
+twilight,--all its objects indistinct as in a dream, the dangerous hour
+that had attracted them for the first time in the seclusion of the
+studio.
+
+Suddenly she drew away in terror, fleeing from him, taking refuge in the
+gloom, pursued by his eager hands.
+
+"No, not that. We'll be sorry for it! Friends! Nothing more than friends
+and always!"
+
+Her voice, as she said this, was sincere, but weak, faint, the voice of
+a victim who resists and has not the strength to defend himself.
+
+When the painter awakened it was night. The light from the street lamps
+shone through the window with a distant, reddish glow.
+
+He shivered with a sensation of cold, as if he were emerging from under
+an enticing wave where he had lain, he could not remember how long. He
+felt weak, humiliated, with the anxiety of a child who has done
+something wrong.
+
+Concha was sobbing. What folly! It had been against her will; she knew
+they would be sorry for it. But she was the first to recover her
+calmness. Her outline rose on the bright background of the window. She
+called the painter who stood in the shadow, ashamed.
+
+"After all, there was no escape," she said firmly. "It was a dangerous
+game and it could not end in any other way. Now I know that I cared for
+you; that you are the only man for whom I can care."
+
+Renovales was beside her. Their two forms made a single outline on the
+bright background of the window, in a supreme embrace as though they
+desired to take refuge in each other.
+
+Her hands gently parted the heavy locks that hid the master's forehead.
+She gazed at him rapturously. Then she kissed his lips with an endless
+caress, whispering:
+
+"Mariano, dear. I love you, I worship you. I will be your slave. Don't
+ever leave me. I will seek you on my knees. You don't know how I will
+care for you. You shall not escape me. You wanted it,--you ugly darling,
+you big giant, my love."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+One afternoon at the end of October, Renovales noticed that his friend
+Cotoner was rather worried.
+
+The master was jesting with him, making him tell about his labors as
+restorer of paintings in the old church. He had come back fatter and
+merrier, with a greasy, priestly luster. According to Renovales he had
+brought back all the health of the clerics. The bishop's table with its
+succulent abundance was a sweet memory for Cotoner. He extolled it and
+described it, praising those good gentlemen who, like himself, lived
+free from passion with no other voluptuousness in life than a refined
+appetite. The master laughed at the thought of the simplicity of those
+priests who in the afternoon, after the choir, formed a group around
+Cotoner's scaffold, following the movements of his hands with wondering
+eyes; at the respect of the attendants and other servants of the
+episcopal palace, hanging on Don José's words, astonished to find such
+modesty in an artist who was a friend of cardinals and had studied in
+Rome.
+
+When the master saw him so serious and silent that afternoon after
+luncheon he wanted to know what was worrying him. Had they complained of
+his restoration? Was his money gone? Cotoner shook his head. It was not
+his affairs; he was worrying over Josephina's condition. Had he not
+noticed her?
+
+Renovales shrugged his shoulders. It was the usual trouble:
+neurasthenia, diabetes, all those chronic ailments of which she did not
+want to be cured, refusing to obey the physicians. She was thinner, but
+her nerves seemed calmer; she cried less; she maintained a sad silence,
+simply wanting to be alone and stay in a corner, staring into space.
+
+Cotoner shook his head again. Renovales' optimism was not to be wondered
+at.
+
+"You are leading a strange life, Mariano. Since I came back from my
+trip, you are a different man; I wouldn't know you. Once, you could not
+live without painting and now you spend weeks at a time without taking
+up a brush. You smoke, sing, walk up and down the studio and all at once
+rush off, out of the house and go--well. I know where, and perhaps your
+wife suspects it. You seem to be having a good time, master. The deuce
+take the rest! But, man alive, come down from the clouds. See what is
+around you; have some charity."
+
+And good Cotoner complained bitterly of the life the master was
+leading--disturbed by sudden impatience and hasty departures, from which
+he returned absent-minded, with a faint smile on his lips and a vague
+look in his eyes, as if he still relished the feast of memories he
+carried in his mind.
+
+The old painter seemed alarmed at Josephina's increasing delicacy, acute
+consumption that still found matter to destroy in her organism wasted by
+years of illness. The poor little woman coughed constantly and this
+cough, that was not dry but prolonged and violent, alarmed Cotoner.
+
+"The doctors ought to see her again."
+
+"The doctors!" exclaimed Renovales, "What's the use? A whole medical
+faculty has been here and to no avail. She doesn't mind them; she
+refuses everything, perhaps to annoy me, to oppose me. There's no
+danger; you don't know her. Weak and small as she is, she will outlive
+you and me."
+
+His voice shook with wrath, as if he could not stand the atmosphere of
+that house where the only distractions he found were the pleasant
+memories that took him away from it.
+
+Cotoner's insistence finally forced him to call a doctor who was a
+friend of his.
+
+Josephina was provoked, divining the cause of their anxiety. She felt
+strong. It was nothing but a cold; the coming of winter. And in her
+glances at the artist there was reproach and insult for his attention
+which she regarded as hypocrisy.
+
+When the doctor and the painter returned to the studio after the
+examination of the patient and stood face to face, the former hesitated
+as if he was afraid to formulate his ideas. He could not say anything
+with certainty; it was easy to make a mistake in regard to that weak
+system that maintained itself only by its extraordinary reserve power.
+Then he had recourse to the usual evasive measure of his profession. He
+advised him to take her away from Madrid, a change of air,--a change of
+life.
+
+Renovales objected. Where could she go, now that winter was beginning,
+when at the height of summer she had wanted to come home? The doctor
+shrugged his shoulders and wrote out a prescription, revealing in his
+expression the desire to write something, not to go away without leaving
+a piece of paper as a trace. He explained various symptoms to the
+husband in order that he might observe them in the patient and he went
+away shrugging his shoulders again with a gesture that revealed
+indecision and dejection.
+
+Pshaw! Who knows? Perhaps! The system sometimes has unexpected
+reactions, wonderful reserve power to resist disease.
+
+This enigmatic consolation alarmed Renovales. He spied on his wife,
+studying her cough, watching her closely when she did not see him. They
+no longer spent the night together. Since Milita's marriage, the father
+occupied her room. They had broken the slavery of the common bed that
+tormented their rest. Renovales made up for this departure by going into
+Josephina's chamber every morning.
+
+"Did you have a good night? Do you want something?"
+
+His wife's eyes greeted him with hostility.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+And she accompanied this brief statement by turning over in the bed,
+disdainfully, with her back to the master.
+
+The painter received these evidences of hostility with quiet
+resignation. It was his duty; perhaps she might die! But this
+possibility of death did not stir him; it left him cold and he was angry
+at himself, as if two distinct personalities existed within him. He
+reproached himself for his cruelty, his icy indifference before the
+invalid who now produced in him only a passing remorse.
+
+One afternoon at the Alberca woman's house, after one of their daring
+meetings with which they defied the holy calm of the noble, who had now
+returned from his trip, the painter spoke timidly of his wife.
+
+"I shall have to come less; don't be surprised. Josephina is very ill."
+
+"Very?" asked Concha.
+
+And in the flash of her glance, Renovales thought he saw something
+familiar, a blue gleam that had danced before him in the darkness of the
+night with infernal glow, troubling his conscience.
+
+"No, maybe it isn't anything. I don't believe there is any danger."
+
+He felt forced to lie. It consoled him to discount her illness. He felt
+that, by this voluntary deceit, he was relieving himself of the anxiety
+that goaded him. It was the lie of the man who justifies himself by
+pretending not to know the depth of the harm he has caused.
+
+"It isn't anything," he said to his daughter, who, greatly alarmed at
+her mother's appearance, came to spend every night with her. "Just a
+cold. It will disappear as soon as good weather comes."
+
+He had a fire in every fireplace in the house; the rooms were as hot as
+a furnace. He declared loudly, without any show of excitement, that his
+wife was merely suffering from a slight cold, and as he spoke with such
+assurance, a strange voice seemed to cry within him: "You lie, she is
+dying; she is dying and you know it."
+
+The symptoms of which the doctor had spoken began to appear with ominous
+regularity in fatal succession. At first he noticed only a constant high
+fever that seemed to grow worse with severe chills at the end of the
+afternoon. Then he observed sweats that were terrifying in their
+frequency--sweats at night that left the print of her body on the
+sheets. And that poor body, which grew more fragile, more like a
+skeleton, as if the fire of the fever were devouring the last particle
+of fat and muscle, was left without any other covering and protection
+than the skin, and that too seemed to be melting away. She coughed
+frequently; at all hours of the day and night her painful hacking
+disturbed the silence of the house. She complained of a continual pain
+in the lower part of her chest. Her daughter made her eat by dint of
+coaxing, lifting the spoon to her mouth, as if she were a child. But
+coughing and nausea made nutrition impossible. Her tongue was dry; she
+complained of an infernal thirst that was devouring her.
+
+Thus passed a month. Renovales, in his optimistic mood, strove to
+believe that her illness would not last long.
+
+"She is not dying, Pepe," he would say in a convinced tone, as if he
+were disposed to quarrel with anyone who opposed this statement. "She is
+not dying, doctor. You don't think she is, do you?"
+
+The doctor would answer with his everlasting shrug. "Perhaps,--it's
+possible." And as the patient refused to submit to an internal
+examination, he was forced to inquire of the daughter and husband about
+the symptoms.
+
+In spite of her extreme emaciation, some parts of her body seemed to be
+undergoing an abnormal swelling. Renovales questioned the doctor
+frankly. What did he think of these symptoms? And the doctor bowed his
+head. He did not know. They must wait: Nature has surprises. But
+afterward, with sudden decision, he pretended that he wanted to write a
+prescription, in order that he might talk with the husband alone in his
+working studio.
+
+"To tell you the truth, Renovales, this pitiful comedy is getting
+tiresome. It may be all right for the others but you are a man. It is
+acute consumption; perhaps a matter of days, perhaps a matter of a few
+months; but she is dying and I know no remedy. If you want to, get some
+one else."
+
+"She is dying!" Renovales was dazed with surprise as if the possibility
+of this outcome had never occurred to him. "She is dying!" And when the
+doctor had gone away, with a firmer step than usual, as if he had freed
+himself of a weight, the painter repeated the words to himself, without
+their producing any other effect than leaving him abstracted in
+senseless stupidity. She is dying! But was it really possible that that
+little woman could die, who had so weighed on his life and whose
+weakness filled him with fear?
+
+Suddenly he found himself walking up and down the studio, repeating
+aloud,
+
+"She is dying! She is dying!"
+
+He said it to himself in order that he might make himself feel sorry,
+and break out into sobs of grief, but he remained mute.
+
+Josephina was going to die--and he was calm. He wanted to weep; it
+seemed to him a duty. He blinked, swelling out his chest, holding his
+breath, trying to take in the whole meaning of his sorrow; but his eyes
+remained dry; his lungs breathed the air with pleasure; his thoughts,
+hard and refractory, did not shudder with any painful image. It was an
+exterior grief that found expression only in words, gestures and excited
+walking, his interior continued its old stolidness, as if the certainty
+of that death had congealed it in peaceful indifference.
+
+The shame of his villainy tormented him. The same instinct that forces
+ascetics to submit themselves to mortal punishments for their imaginary
+sins dragged him with the power of remorse to the sick chamber. He would
+not leave the room; he would face her scornful silence; he would stay
+with her till the end, forgetting sleep and hunger. He felt that he must
+purify himself by some noble, generous sacrifice from this blindness of
+soul that now was terrifying.
+
+Milita no longer spent the nights caring for her mother and would go
+home, somewhat to the discomfiture of her husband, who had been rather
+pleased at this unexpected return to a bachelor's life.
+
+Renovales did not sleep. After midnight when Cotoner went away he walked
+in silence through the brilliantly lighted rooms; he prowled around the
+chamber--entered it to see Josephina in bed, sweating, shaken from time
+to time by a fit of coughing or in a deathlike lethargy, so thin and
+small that the bed-clothes hardly showed the childlike outline of her
+body. Then the master passed the rest of the night in an armchair,
+smoking, his eyes staring but his brain drowsy with sleep.
+
+His thoughts were far away. There was no use in feeling ashamed of his
+cruelty; he seemed bewitched by a mysterious power that was superior to
+his remorse. He forgot the sick woman; he wondered what Concha was doing
+at that time; he saw her in fancy; he remembered her words, her
+caresses; he thought of their nights of abandon. And when, with a
+violent effort, he threw off these dreams, in expiation he would go to
+the door of the sick chamber and listen to her labored breathing,
+putting on a gloomy face, but unable to weep or feel the sadness he
+longed to feel.
+
+After two months of illness, Josephina could no longer stay in bed. Her
+daughter would lift her out of it without any effort as if she were a
+feather, and she would sit in a chair,--small, insignificant,
+unrecognizable, her face so emaciated that its only features seemed to
+be the deep hollows of her eyes and her nose, sharp as the edge of a
+knife.
+
+Cotoner could hardly keep back the tears when he saw her.
+
+"There isn't anything left of her!" he would say as he went away. "No
+one would know her!"
+
+Her harrowing cough scattered a deathly poison about her. White foam
+came to her lips where it seemed to harden in the corners. Her eyes grew
+larger, they took on a strange glow as if they saw through persons and
+things. Oh, those eyes! What a shudder of terror they awakened in
+Renovales!
+
+One afternoon they fell on him, with the intense, searching glance that
+had always terrified him. They were eyes that pierced his forehead, that
+laid bare his thoughts.
+
+They were alone; Milita had gone home; Cotoner was sleeping in a chair
+in the studio. The sick woman seemed more animated, eager to talk,
+looking on her husband with a sort of pity as he sat beside her, almost
+at her feet.
+
+She was going to die; she was certain of death. And a last revolt of
+life that recoils from the end, the horror of the unknown, made the
+tears rise to her eyes.
+
+Renovales protested violently, trying to conceal his deceit by his
+shouts. Die? She must not think of that! She would live; she still had
+before her many years of happy existence.
+
+She smiled as if she pitied him. She could not be deceived; her eyes
+penetrated farther than his; she divined the impalpable, the invisible
+that hovered about her. She spoke weakly but with that inexplicable
+solemnity that is characteristic of a voice that emits its last sounds,
+of a soul that unbosoms itself for the last time.
+
+"I shall die, Mariano, sooner than you think, later than I desire. I
+shall die and you will be free."
+
+He! He desire her death! His surprise and remorse made him jump to his
+feet, wave his arms in angry protest, writhe, as if a pair of invisible
+hands had just laid him bare with a rude wrench.
+
+"Josephina, don't rave. Calm yourself. For God's sake don't talk such
+nonsense!"
+
+She smiled with a painful, horrible expression, but immediately her poor
+face became beautiful with the serenity of one who is departing this
+life without hallucinations or delirium, in perfect mental poise. She
+spoke to him with the immense sympathy, the superhuman compassion of one
+who contemplates the wretched stream of life, departing from its
+current, already touching with her feet the shores of eternal shadow, of
+eternal peace.
+
+"I should not want to go away without telling you. I die knowing
+everything. Do not move; do not protest. You know the power I have over
+you. More than once I have seen you watching me in terror, so easily do
+I read your thoughts. For years I have been convinced that all was over
+between us. We have lived like good creatures of God--eating together,
+sleeping together, helping each other in our needs. But I peered within
+you; I looked at your heart. Nothing! Not a memory, not a spark of love.
+I have been your woman, the good companion who cares for the house, and
+relieves a man of the petty cares of life. You have worked hard to
+surround me with comforts, in order that I might be contented and not
+disturb you. But Love? Never. Many people live as we have--many of them;
+almost all. I could not; I thought that life was something different and
+I am not sorry to go away. Don't go into a rage; don't shout. You aren't
+to blame, poor Mariano--It was a mistake for us to marry."
+
+She excused him gently with a kindness that seemed not of this world,
+generously passing over the cruelty and selfishness of a life she was
+about to leave. Men like him were exceptional; they ought to live alone,
+by themselves, like those great trees that absorb all the life from the
+ground and do not allow a single plant to grow in the space which their
+roots reach. She was not strong enough to stand isolation; in order to
+live she must have the shadow of tenderness, the certainty of being
+loved. She ought to have married a man like other men; a simple being
+like herself, whose only longings were modest and commonplace. The
+painter had dragged her into his extraordinary path out of the easy,
+well-beaten roads that the rest follow and she was falling by the
+wayside, old in the prime of her youth, broken because she had gone with
+him in this journey which was beyond her strength.
+
+Renovales was walking about with ceaseless protests.
+
+"Why, what nonsense you are talking! You are raving! I have always loved
+you, Josephina. I love you now."
+
+Her eyes suddenly became hard. A flash of anger crossed their pupils.
+
+"Stop; don't lie. I know of a pile of letters that you have in your
+studio, hidden behind the books in your library. I have read them one by
+one. I have been following them as they came; I discovered your hiding
+place when you had only three of them. You know that I see through you;
+that I have a power over you, that you can hide nothing from me. I know
+your love affairs."
+
+Renovales felt his ears buzzing, the floor slipping from under his feet.
+What astounding witchcraft! Even the letters so carefully hidden had
+been discovered by that woman's divining instinct!
+
+"It's a lie!" he cried vehemently to conceal his agitation. "It isn't
+love! If you have read them, you know what it is as well as I; just
+friendship; the letters of a friend who is somewhat crazy."
+
+The sick woman smiled sadly. At first it was friendship--even less than
+that, the perverse amusement of a flighty woman who liked to play with a
+celebrated man, exciting in him the enthusiasm of youth. She knew her
+childhood companion; she was sure it would not go any farther; and so
+she pitied the poor man in the midst of his mad love. But afterward
+something extraordinary had certainly happened; something that she could
+not explain and which had upset all of her calculations. Now her husband
+and Concha were lovers.
+
+"Do not deny it; it is useless. It is this certainty that is killing me.
+I realized it when I saw you distracted, with a happy smile as if you
+were relishing your thoughts. I realized it in the merry songs you sang
+when you awoke in the morning, in the perfume with which you were
+impregnated and which followed you everywhere. I did not need to find
+any more letters. The odor around you, that perfume of infidelity, of
+sin, which always accompanied you, was enough. You, poor man, came home
+thinking that everything was left outside the door, and that odor
+follows you, denounces you; I think I can still perceive it."
+
+And her nostrils dilated, as she breathed with a pained expression,
+closing her eyes as though she wished to escape the images which that
+perfume called up in her. Her husband persisted in his denials, now that
+he was convinced that she had no other proof of his infidelity. A lie!
+An hallucination!
+
+"No, Mariano," murmured the sick woman. "She is within you; she fills
+your head; from here I can see her. Once a thousand mad fancies occupied
+her place,--illusions of your taste, naked women, a wantonness that was
+your religion. Now it is she who fills it. It is your desire incarnated.
+Go on and be happy. I am going away--there is no place for me in the
+world."
+
+She was silent for a moment and the tears came to her eyes again at the
+memory of the first years of their life together.
+
+"No one has cared for you as I have, Mariano," she said with tender
+regret. "I look on you now as a stranger, without affection and without
+hate. And still, there was never a woman who loved her husband so
+passionately."
+
+"I worship you. Josephina, I love you just as I did when we first met
+each other. Do you remember?"
+
+But in spite of the emotion he pretended to show, his voice had a false
+ring.
+
+"Don't try to bluff, Mariano; it is useless; everything is over. You do
+not care for me nor have I either any of the old feeling."
+
+In her face there was an expression of wonder, of surprise; she seemed
+terror-stricken at her own calmness that made her forgive thus
+indifferently the man who had caused her so much suffering. In her
+fancy, she saw a wide garden, flowers that seemed immortal and they were
+withering and falling with the advent of winter. Then her thoughts went
+beyond, over the chill of death. The snow was melting; the sun was
+shining once more; the new spring was coming with its court of love and
+the dry branches were growing green once more with another life.
+
+"Who knows!" murmured the sick woman with her eyes closed. "Perhaps,
+after I am dead, you will remember me. Perhaps you will care for me
+then, and be grateful to one who loved you so. We want a thing when it
+is lost."
+
+The invalid was silent, exhausted by such an effort; she relapsed into
+that lethargy which for her took the place of rest. Renovales, after
+this conversation, felt his vile inferiority beside his wife. She knew
+everything and forgave him. She had followed the course of his love,
+letter by letter, look by look, seeing in his smiles the memory of his
+faithlessness. And she was silent! She was dying without a protest! And
+he did not fall at her feet to beg her forgiveness! And he remained
+unmoved, without a tear, without a sigh!
+
+He was afraid to stay alone with her. Milita came back to stay at the
+house to care for her mother. The master took refuge in his studio; he
+wanted to forget in work the body that was dying under the same roof.
+
+But in vain he poured colors on his palette and took up brushes and
+prepared canvases. He did nothing but daub; he could make no progress,
+as if he had forgotten his art. He kept turning his head anxiously,
+thinking that Josephina was going to enter suddenly, to continue that
+interview in which she had laid bare the greatness of her soul and the
+baseness of his own. He felt forced to return to her apartments, to go
+on tiptoe to the door of the chamber, in order to be sure that she was
+there.
+
+Her emaciation was frightful; it had no limits. When it seemed that it
+must stop, it still surprised them with new shrinking, as if after the
+disappearance of her flesh, her poor skeleton was melting away.
+
+Sometimes she was tormented with delirium, and her daughter, holding
+back her tears, approved of the extravagant trips she planned, of her
+proposals to go far away to live with Milita in a garden, where they
+would find no men; where there were no painters--no painters.
+
+She lived about two weeks. Renovales, with cruel selfishness, was
+anxious to rest, complaining of this abnormal existence. If she must
+die, why did she not end it as soon as possible, and restore the whole
+house to tranquillity!
+
+The end came one afternoon when the master, lying on a couch in his
+studio, was re-reading the tender complaints of a scented little letter.
+So long since she had seen him! How was the patient getting on? She knew
+that his duty was there; people would talk if he came to see her. But
+this separation was hard!
+
+He did not have a chance to finish it. Milita came into the studio, in
+her eyes that expression of horror and fright, which the presence of
+death, the touch of his passage, always inspires, even if his arrival
+has been expected.
+
+Her voice came breathlessly, broken. Mamma was talking with her; she was
+amusing her with the hope of a trip in the near future,--and all at once
+a hoarse sound,--her head bent forward before it fell onto her
+shoulder--a moment--nothing--just like a little bird.
+
+Renovales ran to the bedroom, bumping into his friend Cotoner who came
+out of the dining-room, running too. They saw her in an armchair,
+shrunken, wilted, in the deathly abandon that converts the body into a
+limp mass. All was over.
+
+Milita had to catch her father, to hold him up. She had to be the one
+who kept her calmness and energy at the critical moment. Renovales let
+his daughter lead him; he rested his face on her shoulder, with sublime,
+dramatic grief, with beautiful, artistic despair, still holding
+absent-mindedly in his hand the letter of the countess.
+
+"Courage, Mariano," said poor Cotoner, his voice choked with tears. "We
+must be men. Milita, take your father to the studio. Don't let him see
+her."
+
+The master let his daughter guide him, sighing deeply, trying in vain to
+weep. The tears would not come. He could not concentrate his attention;
+a voice within him was distracting him,--the voice of temptation.
+
+She was dead and he was free. He would go on his way, light-hearted,
+master of himself, relieved of troublesome hindrances. Before him lay
+life with all its joys, love without a fear or a scruple; glory with its
+sweet returns.
+
+Life was going to begin again.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Until the beginning of the following winter Renovales did not return to
+Madrid. The death of his wife had left him stunned, as if he doubted its
+reality, as if he felt strange at finding himself alone and master of
+his actions. Cotoner, seeing that he had no ambition for work and would
+lie on the couch in the studio with a blank expression on his face, as
+if he were in a waking dream, interpreted his condition as a deep,
+silent grief. Besides, it irritated him that as soon as Josephina was
+dead, the countess began to come to the house frequently to see the
+master and her dear Milita.
+
+"You ought to go away,"--the old artist advised. "You are free; you will
+be just as well off anywhere as here. What you need is a long journey;
+that will take your mind off your trouble."
+
+And Renovales started on his journey with the eagerness of a school-boy,
+free for the first time from the vigilance of a family. Alone, rich,
+master of his actions, he believed that he was the happiest being on
+earth. His daughter had her husband, a family of her own; he saw himself
+in welcome seclusion, without cares or duties, without any other ties
+than the constant letters of Concha, which met him on his travels. Oh,
+happy freedom!
+
+He lived in Holland, studying its museums, which he had never seen:
+then, with the caprice of a wandering bird, he went down to Italy where
+he enjoyed several months of easy life, without any work, visiting
+studios, receiving the honors due a famous master, in the same places
+where once he had struggled, poor and unknown. Then he moved to Paris,
+finally attracted by the countess, who was spending the summer at
+Biarritz with her husband.
+
+Concha's epistolary style grew more urgent. She had numerous objections
+to a prolongation of the period of their separation. He must come back;
+he had traveled enough. She could not stand it without seeing him; she
+loved him; she could not live without him. Besides, as a last resource,
+she spoke to him of her husband, the count, who, in his eternal
+blindness, joined in his wife's requests asking her to invite the artist
+to spend a while at their house in Biarritz. The poor painter must be
+very sad in his bereavement and the kindly nobleman insisted on
+consoling him in his loneliness. In his house, they would divert him;
+they would be a new family for him.
+
+The painter lived for a great part of the summer and all the autumn in
+the welcome atmosphere of that home which seemed created for him. The
+servants respected him, seeing in him the true master. The countess,
+delirious after his long absence, was so reckless that the artist had to
+restrain her, urging her to be prudent. The noble Count of Alberca was
+unceasing in his sympathy. Poor friend! Deprived of his companion! And
+by his expression he shared the horror he felt at the possibility of
+being left a widower, without that wife who made him so happy.
+
+At the beginning of winter Renovales returned to his house. He did not
+experience the slightest emotion on entering the three great studios, on
+passing through those rooms, which seemed more icy, larger, more hollow,
+now that they were stirred by no other steps than his own. He could not
+believe that a year had passed. All was the same as if he had been
+absent for only a few days. Cotoner had taken good care of the house,
+setting to work the concierge and his wife and the old servant who had
+charge of cleaning the studios,--the only servants that Renovales had
+kept. There was no dust, none of the close atmosphere of a house that
+has long been closed. Everything appeared bright and clean, as if life
+had not been interrupted in that house. The sun and air had been pouring
+in the windows, driving out that atmosphere of sickness which Renovales
+had left when he went away and in which he fancied he could feel the
+trace of the invisible garb of death.
+
+It was a new house, like the one he had known before in form, but as
+fresh as a recently constructed building.
+
+Outside of his studio nothing reminded him of his dead wife. He avoided
+going into her chamber; he did not even ask who had the key. He slept in
+the room that had formerly been his daughter's in a small, iron bed,
+delighted to lead a modest, sober life in that princely mansion.
+
+He took breakfast in the dining room at one end of the table, on a
+napkin, oppressed by the size and luxury of the room which now seemed
+vast and useless. He looked at the chair beside the fireplace, where the
+dead woman had often sat. That chair with its open arms seemed to be
+waiting for her trembling, bird-like little body. But the painter did
+not feel any emotion. He could not even remember Josephina's face
+exactly. She had changed so much! The last, that skeleton-like mask, was
+the one he recalled the best, but he thrust it aside, with the
+selfishness of a strong, happy man, who does not want to sadden his life
+with unpleasant memories.
+
+He did not see her picture anywhere in the house. She seemed to have
+evaporated forever without leaving the least trace of her body on the
+walls that had so often supported her tottering steps, on the stairways
+that hardly felt the weight of her feet. Nothing; she was quite
+forgotten. Within Renovales, the only trace of the long years of their
+union that remained was an unpleasant feeling, an annoying memory that
+made him relish all the more his new existence.
+
+His first days in the solitude of the house brought new, intense joys.
+After luncheon he would lie down on the couch in the studio, watching
+the blue spirals of cigar smoke. Complete liberty! Alone in the world!
+Life wholly to himself, without any care or fear. He could go and come
+without a pair of eyes spying on his actions, without being reproached
+with bitter words. That little door of the studio, which he used to
+watch in terror, no longer opened, to let in his enemy. He could close
+it, shutting out the world; he could open it and summon in a noisy,
+scandalous stream, all that he fancied--hosts of naked beauties, to
+paint in a wild bacchanalian rout, strange, black-eyed Oriental girls to
+dance in morbid abandon on the rugs of the studio, all the disordered
+illusions of his desire--the monstrous feasts of fancy which he had
+dreamed of in his days of servitude. He was not sure where he could find
+all this, he was not very eager to look for it. But the consciousness
+that he could realize it without any obstacle was enough.
+
+This consciousness of his absolute freedom, instead of urging him into
+action, kept him in a state of calm, satisfied that he could do
+everything, without the least desire to try anything. Formerly he used
+to rage, complaining of his fetters. What things he would do if he were
+free! What scandals he would cause with his daring! Oh, if he only were
+not married to a slave of convention who tried to apply rules to his art
+with the same formality which she had for her calls and her household
+expenses!
+
+And now that the slave of convention was gone, the artist remained in
+sleepy comfort, looking like a timid lover, at the canvases he had begun
+a year before, at his neglected palette, saying with false energy, "This
+is the last day. To-morrow I will begin."
+
+And the next day, noon came, and with it luncheon, before Renovales had
+taken up a brush. He read foreign papers, magazines on art, looking up,
+with professional interest, what the famous painters of Europe were
+exhibiting or working on. He received a call from some of his humble
+companions, and in their presence he lamented the insolence of the
+younger generation, their disrespectful attacks, with the surliness of a
+famous artist who is getting old and thinks that talent has died out
+with him and that no one can take his place. Then the drowsiness of
+digestion seized him, as it did Cotoner, and he submitted to the bliss
+of short naps, the happiness of doing nothing. His daughter--all the
+family he had--would receive more than she expected at his death. He had
+worked enough. Painting, like all the arts, was a pretty deceit, for the
+advancement of which men strove as if they were mad, until they hated it
+like death. What folly! It was better to keep calm, enjoying your own
+life, intoxicated with the simple animal joys, living for life's sake.
+What good were a few more pictures in those huge palaces filled with
+canvases, disfigured by the centuries, in which hardly a single stroke
+was left as the author had made it? What good did it do the human race,
+which changes its dwelling place every dozen centuries and has seen the
+proud works of man, built of marble or granite, fall in ruins,--if a
+certain Renovales produced a few beautiful toys of cloth and colors,
+which a cigar stub could destroy, or a puff of wind, a drop of water
+leaking through the wall, might ruin in a few years?
+
+But this pessimistic attitude disappeared when some one called him
+"Illustrious Master," or when he saw his name in a paper, and a pupil or
+admirer manifested an interest in his work.
+
+At present he was resting. He had not yet recovered from the shock. Poor
+Josephina! But he was going to work a great deal; he felt a new strength
+for works greater than any that he had thus far produced. And after
+these exclamations, he would be seized with a mad desire for work and
+would enumerate the pictures he had in mind, dwelling upon their
+originality. They were bold problems in color, new technical methods
+that had occurred to him. But these plans never passed the limits of
+speech, they never reached the brush. The springs of his will, once
+vibrant and vigorous, seemed broken or rusted. He did not suffer, he did
+not desire. Death had taken away his fever for work, his artistic
+restlessness, leaving him in the limbo of comfort and tranquillity.
+
+In the afternoon, when he succeeded in throwing off his comfortable
+torpor, he went to see his daughter, if she was in Madrid, for she very
+frequently went with her husband on his automobile trips. Then he ended
+the afternoon at the Albercas', where he often stayed till midnight.
+
+He dined there almost every day. The count, accustomed to his society,
+seemed as eager to see him as his wife. He spoke enthusiastically of the
+portrait which Renovales was painting of him to go with Concha's. He
+would make more progress when he secured some insignia of foreign orders
+that were still lacking in his catalogue of honors. And the artist felt
+a twinge of remorse as he listened to the good gentleman's simplicity,
+while his wife, with mad recklessness, caressed him with her eyes,
+leaned toward him as if she were on the point of falling into his arms.
+
+Then, as soon as the husband went away, she would throw her arms about
+him, hungry for him, defying the curiosity of the servants. Love that
+was threatened with dangers seemed sweeter to her. And the artist took
+pride in letting her worship him. He, who at first was the one who
+implored and pursued, assumed now an air of passive superiority,
+accepting Concha's homage.
+
+Lacking enthusiasm for work, in order to keep up his reputation
+Renovales took refuge in the official honors which are granted to
+respected masters. He put off till the next day the new work, the great
+work that was to call forth new cries of admiration over his name. He
+would paint his famous picture of Phryne on a beach, when summer came,
+and he could retire to the solitary shore, taking with him the perfect
+beauty to serve as his model. Perhaps he could persuade the countess.
+Who knows! She smiled with satisfaction every time she heard from his
+lips the praise of her beauty. But meanwhile the master demanded that
+people should remember his name for his earlier works, that they should
+admire him for what he had already produced.
+
+He was irritated at the papers, which extolled the younger generation,
+remembered him only to mention him in passing, like a consecrated glory,
+like a man who was dead and had his pictures in the Museo del Prado. He
+was gnawed with dumb anger, like an actor who is tortured with envy,
+seeing the stage occupied by others.
+
+He wanted to work; he was going to work immediately. But as time passed,
+he felt an increasing laziness, which incapacitated him for work, a
+numbness in his hands, which he concealed even from his most intimate
+friends, ashamed when he recalled his lightness of touch in the old
+days.
+
+"This will not last," he said to himself with the confidence of a man
+who does not doubt his ability.
+
+In one of his fanciful moods, he compared himself with a dog, restless,
+fierce and aggressive when he is tormented with hunger, but gentle and
+peaceable when he is surrounded with comforts. He needed his periods of
+greed and restlessness, when he desired everything, when he could not
+find peace for his work, and in the midst of his marital troubles
+attacked the canvas as if it were an enemy, hurling colors on it
+furiously, in slaps of light. Even after he was rich and famous, he had
+had something to long for. "If I only were free! If I were master of my
+time! If I lived alone, without a family, without cares; as a true
+artist should live!" And now his wishes were fulfilled, he had nothing
+to hope for, but he was a victim of laziness that amounted to
+exhaustion, absolutely without desire, as if only wrath and restlessness
+were for him the internal goad of inspiration.
+
+The longing for fame tormented him; as the days went by and his name was
+not mentioned, he believed that he had come to an obscure death. He
+fancied that the youths turned their backs on him, to look in the
+opposite direction, storing him away among the respected dead, admiring
+other masters. His artistic pride made him seek opportunities for
+notoriety, with the guilelessness of a tyro. He, who scoffed so at the
+official honors and the "sheepfold" of the academies, suddenly
+remembered that several years before, after one of his successes, they
+had elected him a member of the Academy of Fine Arts.
+
+Cotoner was astonished to see the importance he began to attach to this
+unsolicited distinction, at which he had always laughed.
+
+"That was a boy's joking," said the master gravely. "Life cannot always
+be taken as a laughing matter. We must be serious, Pepe; we are getting
+on in years, and we must not always make fun of things that are
+essentially respectable."
+
+Besides, he charged himself with rudeness. Those worthy personages, whom
+he had often compared with all kinds of animals, no doubt thought it
+strange that the years went by without his caring to occupy his seat. He
+must go to the academic reception. And Cotoner, at his bidding, attended
+to all the details, from taking the news to those worthies, in order
+that they might set the date for the function, to arranging the speech
+of the new Academician. For Renovales learned with some misgiving that
+he must read a speech. He, accustomed to handling the brush and poorly
+trained in his childhood, took up the pen with timidity, and even in his
+letters to the Alberca woman preferred to represent his passionate
+phrases with amusing pictures, to embodying them in words.
+
+The old Bohemian got him out of this difficulty. He knew his Madrid
+well. The secrets of the world which are detailed in the newspapers had
+no mysteries for him. Renovales should have as magnificent a speech as
+any one.
+
+And one afternoon he brought to the studio a certain Isidro Maltrana,[A]
+a diminutive, ugly young fellow with a huge head, and an air of
+self-satisfaction and boldness that disgusted Renovales from the very
+first. He was well dressed but the lapels of his coat were dirty with
+ashes, and its collar was strewn with dandruff. The painter observed
+that he smelt of wine. At first he pompously styled him master, but
+after a few words he called him by name with disconcerting familiarity.
+He moved about the studio as if it were his own, as if he had spent his
+whole life in it, indifferent to its beautiful decorations.
+
+It would not be any trouble for him to undertake the preparation of a
+speech. That was his specialty. Academic receptions and works for
+members of Congress were his best field. He understood that the master
+needed him--a painter!
+
+And Renovales, who was beginning to find this Maltrana fellow attractive
+in spite of his insolence, drew himself up to his full height in the
+majesty of his fame. If it was a question of doing a picture for
+admission, he was the man. But a speech!
+
+"Agreed: you shall have the speech," said Maltrana. "It's an easy
+matter, I know the recipe. We shall speak of the holy traditions of the
+past, we shall despise certain daring innovations on the part of the
+inexperienced youth, which were perfectly proper twenty years ago, when
+you were beginning, but which now are out of place. Do you care for a
+thrust at modernism?"
+
+Renovales smiled, enchanted at the frankness with which this young
+fellow spoke of his task, and he moved one hand to suggest a balance.
+"Man alive! Like this. A just mean is what we want."
+
+"Of course, Renovales; flatter the old men and not quarrel with the
+young. You are a real master. You will be pleased with my work."
+
+With the calmness of a shopkeeper, before the artist had a chance to
+speak of the charge, he broached the matter. It would be two thousand
+_reales_; he had already told Cotoner. The low tariff; the one he set
+for people he liked.
+
+"A man must live, Renovales. I have a son."
+
+And his voice grew serious as he said this; his face, ugly and cynical,
+became noble for a moment, reflecting the cares of paternal love.
+
+"A son, dear master, for whom I do anything that turns up. If it is
+necessary I will steal. He is the only thing I have in the world. His
+mother died in misery in the hospital. I dreamt of being something, but
+you can't think of nonsense when you have a baby. Between the hope of
+being famous and the certainty of eating--eating is the first."
+
+But his tenderness was not of long duration. He recovered the cold,
+mercenary expression of a man who goes through life in an armor of
+cynicism, disillusioned by misfortune, setting a price on all his acts.
+They agreed on the sum; he should receive it when he handed over the
+speech.
+
+"And if you print it, as I hope," he said as he went away, "I will read
+the proof without any extra charge. Of course that is a special favor to
+you, because I am one of your admirers."
+
+Renovales spent several weeks in the preparations for his reception, as
+if it were the most important event in his life. The countess also took
+a great interest in the matter. She would see to it that it was a
+distinguished function, something like the receptions of the French
+Academy, described in the papers or in novels. All of her friends would
+be present. The great painter would read his speech, the cynosure of a
+hundred interested eyes, amid the fluttering of fans and the buzz of
+conversation. An immense success which would enrage many artists who
+were eager to get a foothold in high society.
+
+A few days before the function, Cotoner handed him a bundle of papers.
+It was a copy of the speech,--in a fair hand; it was already paid for.
+And Renovales, with the instinct of an actor anxious to make a good
+show, spent an afternoon, striding from studio to studio, with the
+manuscript in one hand and making energetic gestures with the other,
+while he read the paragraphs aloud. That impudent Maltrana was gifted!
+It was a work that filled the simple artist with enthusiasm, in his
+ignorance of everything except printing, a series of glorious trumpet
+blasts, in which were scattered names, many names; appreciations in
+tremulous rhetoric, historical summaries, so well rounded, so complete
+that it seemed as though mankind had been living since the beginning of
+the world with no other thought than Renovates' speech, and judging its
+acts in order that he might give them a definite interpretation.
+
+The artist felt a thrill of elevation as he repeated in eloquent
+succession Greek names, many of which were mere sounds to him, for he
+was not certain whether they were great sculptors or tragic poets.
+Again, he experienced a sensation of self-satisfaction when he
+encountered the names of Dante and Shakespeare. He knew that they had
+not painted, but they ought to appear in every speech which was worthy
+of respect. And when he came to the paragraphs on modern art, he seemed
+to touch terra firma, and smiled with a superior air. Maltrana did not
+know much about that subject; superficial appreciation of a layman; but
+he wrote well, very well; he could not have done better himself. And he
+studied his speech, till he could repeat whole paragraphs by heart,
+paying particular attention to the pronunciation of the difficult names,
+taking lessons from his most cultured friends.
+
+"It is for appearance's sake," he said naïvely. "It is because I don't
+want people to poke fun at me, even if I am only a painter."
+
+The day of the reception he had luncheon long before noon. He scarcely
+touched the food; this ceremony, which he had never seen, made him
+rather worried. To his anxiety was added the irritation he always felt
+when he had to attend to the care of his person.
+
+His long years of married life had accustomed him to neglect all the
+trivial, everyday needs of life. If he had to appear in different
+clothes than usual, the hands of his wife and daughter deftly arranged
+them for him. Even at the times of greatest ill-feeling, when he and
+Josephina hardly spoke to each other, he noticed around him the
+scrupulous order of that excellent housekeeper who removed all obstacles
+from his way, relieving him of the ordinary cares of life.
+
+Cotoner was away; the servant had gone to the countess's to take her
+some invitations which she had asked for, at the last minute, for some
+friends. Renovales decided to dress alone. His son-in-law and daughter
+were going to come for him at two. López de Sosa had insisted on taking
+him to the Academy in his car, seeking, no doubt, by this a little ray
+of the splendor of official glory that was to be showered on his
+father-in-law.
+
+Renovales dressed himself, after struggling with the many difficulties
+that arose from his lack of habit. He was as awkward as a child without
+his mother's help. When at last he looked at himself in the mirror, with
+his dress coat on and his cravat neatly tied, he heaved a sigh of
+relief. At last! Now the insignia--the ribbon. Where could he find those
+honorary trinkets? Since Milita's wedding he had not had them on, the
+poor departed had put them away. Where could he find them? And hastily,
+fearing the time would go by and his children would surprise him before
+he finished the decoration of his person, out of breath, swearing with
+impatience, wandering around in hopeless confusion, unable to remember
+anything definitely, he entered the room his wife had used as a
+wardrobe. Perhaps she had put away his insignia there. He opened the
+doors of the great clothes-closets with a nervous pull. Clothes! Nothing
+but clothes.
+
+The odor of balsam, which made him think of the silent calm of the
+woods, was mingled with a subtle, mysterious perfume, a perfume of years
+gone by, of dead beauties, of forgotten memories, like the fragrance of
+dried flowers. This odor came from the mass of clothes that hung there,
+white, black, pink and blue dresses, with their colors dull and
+indistinct, the lace crumpled and yellow, retaining in their folds
+something of the living fragrance of the form they once had covered. The
+whole past of the dead woman was there. With superstitious care, she had
+stored away the gowns of the different periods of her life, as if she
+had been afraid to get rid of them, to tear out a part of her life.
+
+As the painter looked at some of these gowns, he felt the same emotion
+as if they were old friends who had suddenly appeared like an unexpected
+surprise. A pink skirt recalled the happy days in Rome; a blue suit
+brought to his memory the Piazza di san Marco, and he thought he heard
+the fluttering of the doves and the distant rumble of the noisy _Ride of
+the Valkyries_. The dark, cheap suits that belonged to the cruel days of
+struggle hung at the back of the closet, like the garb of suffering and
+sacrifice. A straw hat, bright as a summer wood, covered with red
+flowers and with cherries, seemed to smile to him from a shelf. Oh, he
+knew that too! Many a time its sharp edge of straw had stuck into his
+forehead, when at sunset on the roads of the Roman Compagna he used to
+bend down, with his arm around his little wife's waist, to kiss her lips
+that trembled softly, while from the distance in the blue mist came the
+tinkle of the bells of the flocks and the mournful songs of the
+drivers.
+
+That youthful perfume, grown old in its confinement, which poured from
+the closets in waves, with the rush of an old wine that escapes from the
+dusty bottle in spurts, spoke to him of the past, calling up the joys
+that were dead. His senses trembled, a subtle intoxication crept over
+him. He fancied he had fallen into a sea of perfume that buffeted him
+with its waves, playing with him as if he were an inert body. It was the
+scent of youth that came back to him; the incense of the happy days,
+fainter, more subtle with the regret of dead years. It was the perfume
+of her beauty which one night in Rome had made him sigh admiringly.
+
+"I worship you, Josephina. You are as fair as Goya's little _Maja_. You
+are the _Maja Desnuda_."
+
+Holding his breath like a swimmer, he delved into the depths of the
+closets, reaching out his hands greedily, yet eager to get out of there,
+to return, as soon as he could, to the surface, to the pure air. He came
+upon card-board boxes, bundles of belts and old lace, without finding
+what he was seeking. And every time that his trembling arms shook the
+old clothes, the swinging of the skirts seemed to throw in his face a
+wave of that dead, indefinable perfume which he breathed more with his
+fancy than with his senses.
+
+He wanted to get out as soon as possible. The insignia were not in the
+wardrobe. Perhaps he would find them in the chamber. And for the first
+time since the death of his wife, he ventured to turn the door key. The
+perfume of the past seemed to go with him; it had penetrated through all
+the pores of his body. He fancied he felt the pressure of a pair of
+distant, enormous arms, that came from the infinite. He was no longer
+afraid to enter the chamber.
+
+He groped his way, looking for one of the windows. When the shutters
+creaked and the sunlight rushed in, the painter's eyes, after a moment
+of blinking, saw, like a sweet, faint smile, the glow of the Venetian
+furniture.
+
+What a beautiful artistic chamber! After a year of absence, the painter
+admired the great clothes-press with its three mirrors, deep and blue as
+only the mirror-makers of Murano could make them and the ebony of the
+furniture inlaid with tiny bits of pearl and bright jewels, a specimen
+of the artistic genius of ancient Venice in contact with Oriental
+peoples. This furniture had been for Renovales one of the great
+undertakings of his youth; the whim of a lover, eager to bestow princely
+honors on his companion after years of strict economy.
+
+They had always had their luxurious bedroom wherever they were, even at
+the time of their poverty. In those hard days when he painted in the
+attic and Josephina did the cooking, they had no chairs, they ate from
+the same plate; Milita played with rag-dolls; but in their miserable,
+whitewashed alcove were piled up with sacred respect all that furniture
+of the fair-haired wife of some Doge, like a hope for the future, a
+promise of better times. She, poor woman, with her simple faith, cleaned
+it, worshiped it, waiting for the hour of magic transformation to move
+them to a palace.
+
+The painter glanced about the chamber calmly. He found nothing unusual
+there, nothing that moved him. Cotoner had prudently hidden the chair in
+which Josephina died.
+
+The princely bed, with its monumental head and foot of carved ebony and
+brilliant mosaic, looked vulgar with the mattresses piled in a heap.
+Renovales laughed at the terror which had so often made him stop in
+front of the locked door. Death had left no trace. Nothing there
+reminded him of Josephina. In the atmosphere floated that smell of
+closeness, that odor of dust and dampness which one finds in all rooms
+that have long been closed.
+
+The time was passing, the insignia must be found, and Renovales, already
+accustomed to the room, opened the clothes-press, expecting to find them
+in it.
+
+There, too, the wood seemed to scatter, as he opened the door, a perfume
+like that of the other room. It was fainter, more vague, more distant.
+
+Renovales thought it was an illusion of his senses. But no; from the
+depths of the clothes-press came an invisible vapor wrapping him in its
+caressing breath. There were no clothes there. His eyes recognized
+immediately in the bottom of a compartment the boxes he was looking for;
+but he did not reach out his hands for them; he stood motionless, lost
+in the contemplation of a thousand trivial objects that reminded him of
+Josephina.
+
+She was there, too; she came forth to meet him, more personal, more real
+than from among the heap of old clothes. Her gloves seemed to preserve
+the warmth and the outline of those hands which once had run caressingly
+through the artist's hair, her collars reminded him of her warm ivory
+neck where he used to place his kisses.
+
+His hands turned over everything with painful curiosity. An old fan,
+carefully put away, seemed to move him in spite of its sorry appearance.
+Among its broken folds he could see a trace of old colors--a head he had
+painted when his wife was only a friend--a gift for Señorita de
+Torrealta who wanted to have something done by the young artist. At the
+bottom of a case shone two huge pearls, surrounded by diamonds; a
+present from Milan, the first jewel of real worth which he had bought
+for his wife, as they were walking through the Piazza del Duomo; a whole
+remittance from his manager in Rome invested in this costly trinket
+which made the little woman flush with pleasure while her eyes rested
+on him with intense gratitude.
+
+His eager fingers, as they turned over boxes, belts, handkerchiefs and
+gloves, came upon souvenirs with which her person was forever connected.
+That poor woman had lived for him, only for him, as if her own existence
+were nothing, as if it had no meaning unless it were joined with his. He
+found carefully put away among belts and band-boxes--photographs of the
+places where she had spent her youth; the buildings of Rome; the
+mountains of the old Papal States, the canals of Venice--relics of the
+past which no doubt were of great value to her because they called up
+the image of her husband. And among these papers he saw dry, crushed
+flowers, proud roses, or modest wild flowers, withered leaves, nameless
+souvenirs whose importance Renovales realized, suspecting that they
+recalled some happy moment completely forgotten by him.
+
+The artist's portraits, at different ages, rose from all the corners,
+entangled among belts or buried under the piles of handkerchiefs. Then
+several bundles of letters appeared, the ink reddened with time, written
+in a hand that made the artist uneasy. He recognized it; it was dimly
+associated in his memory with some person whose name had escaped him.
+Fool! It was his own handwriting, the laborious heavy hand of his youth
+which was dexterous only with the brush. There in those yellow folds was
+the whole story of his life, his intellectual efforts to say "pretty
+things" like men who write. Not one was missing; the letters of their
+early engagement when, after they had seen and talked to each other,
+they still felt that they must put on paper what their lips did not
+venture to say; others with Italian stamps, exuberant with extravagant
+expressions of love, short notes he sent her when he was going to spend
+a few days with some other artists at Naples, or to visit some dead
+city in the Marcha; then the letters from Paris to the old Venetian
+palace, inquiring anxiously for the little girl, asking about the
+nursing, trembling with fear at the possibility of the inevitable
+diseases of childhood.
+
+Not one was lacking; all were there, put away like fetishes, perfumed
+with love, tied up with ribbons like the balsam and swathings of a
+mummified life. Her letters had had a different fate, her written love
+had been scattered, lost in the void. They had been left forgotten in
+old suits, burned in the fireplaces, or had fallen into strange hands,
+where they provoked laughter at their tender simplicity. The only
+letters he kept were a few of the other woman's and, as he thought of
+this, he was seized with remorse, with infinite shame at his evil
+doings.
+
+He read the first lines of some of them, with a strange feeling, as if
+they were written by another man, wondering at their passionate tone.
+And it was he who had written that! How he loved Josephina then! It did
+not seem possible that this affection could have ended so coldly. He was
+surprised at the indifference of the last years; he no longer remembered
+the troubles of their life together; he saw his wife now as she was in
+her youth, with her calm face, her quiet smile and admiration in her
+eyes.
+
+He continued to read, passing eagerly from letter to letter. He wondered
+at his own youth, virtuous in spite of his passionate nature, at the
+chastity of his devotion to his wife, the only, the unquestionable one.
+He experienced the joy, tinged with melancholy, which a decrepit old man
+feels at the contemplation of his youthful portrait. And he had been
+like that! From the bottom of his soul, a stern voice seemed to rise in
+a reproachful tone, "Yes, like that, when you were good, when you were
+honorable."
+
+He became so absorbed in his reading that he did not notice the lapse of
+time. Suddenly he heard steps in the distant hallway, the rustle of
+skirts, his daughter's voice. Outside the house a horn was tooting; his
+haughty son-in-law telling him to hurry; trembling with fear at the
+prospect of being discovered, he took the insignia and the ribbons out
+of their cases and hastily closed the door of the clothes-press.
+
+The reception of the Academy was almost a failure for Renovales. The
+countess found him very interesting, with his face pale with excitement,
+his breast starred with jewels and his shirt front cut with several
+bright lines of colors. But as soon as he stood up amid general
+curiosity, with his manuscript in his hand, and began to read the first
+paragraphs, a murmur arose which kept increasing and finally drowned out
+his voice. He read thickly, with the haste of a school-boy who wants to
+have it over, without noticing what he was saying, in a monotonous
+sing-song. The sonorous rehearsals in the studio, the careful
+preparation of dramatic gestures was forgotten. His mind seemed to be
+somewhere else, far away from that ceremony; his eyes saw nothing but
+the letters. The fashionable assemblage went out, glad they had gathered
+and seen each other again. Many lips laughed at the speech behind their
+gauze fans, delighted to be able to scratch indirectly his friend the
+Alberca woman.
+
+"Awful, my dear! Insufferably boring!"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+As soon as he awoke the next day, Renovales felt that he must have open
+air, light, space, and he went out of the house, not stopping in his
+walk, up the Castellana, until he reached the clearing near the
+Exhibition Hall.
+
+The night before he had dined at the Albercas'--almost a formal banquet
+in honor of his entrance into the Academy, at which many of the
+distinguished gentlemen who formed the countess's coterie were present.
+She seemed radiant with joy, as if she were celebrating a triumph of her
+own. The count treated the famous master with greater respect than ever;
+he had just advanced another step in glory. His respect for all honorary
+distinctions made him admire that Academic medal, the only distinction
+he could not add to his load of insignia.
+
+Renovales spent a bad night. The countess's champagne did not agree with
+him. He had gone home with a sort of fear, as if something unusual was
+awaiting him which his uneasiness could not explain. He took off the
+dress clothes which had been torturing him for several hours and went to
+bed, surprised at the vague fear that followed him even to the
+threshhold of his room. He saw nothing unusual around him, his room
+presented the same appearance it always did. He feel asleep, overcome by
+weariness, by the digestive torpor of that extraordinary banquet, and he
+did not awake at all during the night; but his sleep was cruel, tossed
+with dreams that perhaps made him groan.
+
+On awakening, late in the morning, at the steps of his servant in the
+dressing room, he realized by the tumbled condition of the bed-clothes,
+by the cold sweat on his forehead and the weariness of his body what a
+restless night he had passed amid nervous starts.
+
+His brain, still heavy with sleep, could not unravel the memories of the
+night. He knew only that he had had unpleasant dreams; perhaps he had
+wept. The one thing he could recall was a pale face, rising from among
+the black veils of unconsciousness, around which all his dreams were
+centered. It was not Josephina; the face had the expression of a person
+of another world.
+
+But as his mental numbness gradually disappeared, while he was washing
+and dressing, and while the servant was helping him on with his
+overcoat, he thought, summoning his memories with an effort, that it
+might be she. Yes, it was she. Now he remembered that in his dream he
+had been conscious of that perfume which had followed him since the day
+before, which accompanied him to the Academy, disturbing his reading,
+and which had gone with him to the banquet, running between his eyes and
+Concha's like a mist, through which he looked at her, without seeing
+her.
+
+The coolness of the morning cleared his mind. The wide prospect from the
+heights of the Exhibition Hall seemed to blot out instantly the memories
+of the night.
+
+A wind from the mountains was blowing on the plateau near the
+Hippodrome. As he walked against the wind, he felt a buzz in his ears,
+like the distant roar of the sea. In the background, beyond the slopes
+with their little red houses and wintry poplars, bare as broomsticks,
+the mountains of Guadarrama stood out, luminously clear against the blue
+sky, with their snowy crests and their huge peaks which seemed made of
+salt. In the opposite direction, sunk in a deep cut, appeared the
+covering of Madrid; the black roofs, the pointed towers--all indistinct
+in a haze that gave the buildings in the background the vague blue of
+the mountains.
+
+The plateau, covered with wretched, thin grass, its furrows stiffly
+frozen, flashed here and there in the sunlight. The bits of tile on the
+ground, broken pieces of china and tin cans reflected the light as if
+they were precious metals.
+
+Renovales looked for a long while at the back of the Exhibition Palace;
+the yellow walls trimmed with red brick which hardly rose above the edge
+of the clearing; the flat zinc roofs, shining like dead seas; the
+central cupola, huge, swollen, cutting the sky with its black curves,
+like a balloon on the point of rising. From one wing of the Palace came
+the sound of bugles, prolonging their warlike notes to the accompaniment
+of the hoofbeats amid clouds of dust. Beside one door swords were
+flashing and the sun was reflected on patent-leather hats.
+
+The painter smiled. That palace had been erected for them, and now the
+rural police occupied it. Once every two years Art entered it, claiming
+the place from the horses of the guardians of peace. Statues were set up
+in rooms that smelt of oats and stout shoes. But this anomaly did not
+last long; the intruder was driven out, as soon as the place was
+beginning to have a semblance of European culture, and there remained in
+the Exhibition Palace the true, the national, the privileged police, the
+sorry jades of holy authority which galloped down to the streets of
+Madrid when its slothful peace was at rare intervals disturbed.
+
+As the master looked at the black cupola, he remembered the days of
+exhibitions; he saw the long-haired, anxious youths, now gentle and
+flattering, now angry and iconoclastic, coming from all the cities of
+Spain with their pictures under their arms and mighty ambitions in
+their minds. He smiled at the thought of the unpleasantness and disgust
+he had suffered under that roof, when the turbulent throng of artists
+crowded around him, annoyed him, admiring him more because of his
+position as an influential judge than because of his works. It was he
+who awarded the prizes in the opinion of those young fellows who
+followed him with looks of fear and hope. On the afternoon when the
+prizes were awarded, groups rushed out to meet him in the portico at the
+news of his arrival; they greeted him with extravagant demonstrations of
+respect. Some walked in front of him, talking loudly. "Who? Renovales?
+The greatest painter in the world. Next to Velásquez." And at the end of
+the afternoon, when the two sheets of paper were placed on the columns
+of the rotunda, with the lists of winners, the master prudently slipped
+out to avoid the final explosion. The childish soul that every artist
+has within him burst out frankly at the announcement. False pretences
+were over; every man showed his true nature. Some hid between the
+statues, dejected and ashamed, with their fists in their eyes, weeping
+at the thought of the return to their distant home, of the long misery
+they had suffered with no other hope than that which had just vanished.
+Others stood straight as roosters, their ears red, their lips pale,
+looking toward the entrance of the palace with flaming eyes, as if they
+wanted to see from there a certain pretentious house with a Greek façade
+and a gold inscription. "The fossil! It is a shame that the fortunes of
+the younger men, who really amount to something, are entrusted to an old
+fogey who has run out, a 'four-flusher' who will never leave anything
+worth while behind him!" Oh, from those moments had arisen all the
+annoyances of his artistic activity. Every time that he heard of an
+unjust censure, a brutal denial of his ability, a merciless attack in
+some obscure paper, he remembered the rotunda of the Exhibition, that
+stormy crowd of painters around the bits of paper which contained their
+sentences. He thought with wonder and sympathy of the blindness of those
+youths who cursed life because of a failure, and were capable of giving
+their health, their vigor, in exchange for the sorry glory of a picture,
+less lasting even than the frail canvas. Every medal was a rung on the
+ladder; they measured the importance of these awards, giving them a
+meaning like that of a soldier's stripes. And he too had been young! He
+too had embittered the best years of his life in these combats, like
+amoebæ who struggle together in a drop of water, fancying they may
+conquer a huge world! What interest had eternal beauty in these
+regimental ambitions, in this ladder-climbing fever of those who strove
+to be her interpreters?
+
+The master went home. The walk had made him forget his anxiety of the
+night before. His body, weakened by his easy life, seemed to acknowledge
+this exercise with a violent reaction. His legs itched slightly, the
+blood throbbed in his temples, it seemed to spread through his body in a
+wave of warmth. He exulted in his power and tasted the joy of every
+organism that is performing its functions in harmonious regularity.
+
+As he crossed the garden, he was humming a song. He smiled to the
+concierge's wife who had opened the gate for him and to the ugly
+watchdog who came up with a caressing whine to lick his trousers. He
+opened the glass door, passing from the noise outside into deep,
+convent-like silence. His feet sank in the soft rugs; the only sounds
+were the mysterious trembling of the pictures which covered the walls up
+to the ceiling, the creaking of invisible wood-borers in the picture
+frames, the swing of the hangings in a breath of air. Everything that
+the master had painted; studies or whims, finished or unfinished, was
+placed on the ground floor, together with pictures and drawings by some
+famous companions or favorite pupils. Milita had amused herself for a
+long time before she was married, in this decoration which reached even
+to poorly lighted hallways.
+
+As he left his hat and stick on the hat-rack, the eyes of the master
+fell on a nearby water-color, as if this picture attracted his attention
+among the others which surrounded it. He was surprised that he should
+now notice it of a sudden, after passing by it so many times without
+seeing it. It was not bad; but it was timid; it showed lack of
+experience. Whose could it be? Perhaps Soldevilla's. But as he drew near
+to see it better, he smiled. It was his own! How differently he painted
+then! He tried to remember when and where he had painted it. To help his
+memory, he looked closely at that charming woman's head, with its dreamy
+eyes, wondering who the model could have been.
+
+Suddenly a cloud came over his face. The artist seemed confused,
+ashamed. How stupid! It was his wife, the Josephina of the early days,
+when he used to gaze at her admiringly, delighting in reproducing her
+face.
+
+He threw the blame for his slowness on Milita and determined to have the
+study taken away from there. His wife's portrait ought not be in the
+hall, beside the hat-rack.
+
+After luncheon he gave orders to the servant to take down the picture
+and move it into one of the drawing-rooms. The servant looked surprised.
+
+"There are so many portraits of the mistress. You have painted her so
+many times, sir. The house is full."
+
+Renovales mimicked the servant's expression. "So many! So many!" He knew
+how many times he had painted her! With a sudden curiosity before going
+to the studio, he entered the parlor where Josephina received her
+callers. There, in the place of honor, he saw a large portrait of his
+wife, painted in Rome, a dainty woman with a lace mantilla, a black
+ruffled skirt and, in her hand, a tortoise-shell fan--a veritable Goya.
+He gazed for a moment at that attractive face, shaded by the black lace,
+its oriental eyes in sharp contrast to its aristocratic pallor. How
+beautiful Josephina was in those days!
+
+He opened the windows the better to see the portrait and the light fell
+on the dark red walls making the frames of other smaller pictures flash.
+
+Then the painter saw that the Goyesque picture was not the only one.
+Other Josephinas accompanied him in the solitude. He gazed with
+astonishment at the face of his wife, which seemed to rise from all
+sides of the parlor. Little studies of women of the people or ladies of
+the 18th century; water-colors of Moorish women; Greek women with the
+stiff severity of Alma-Tadema's archaic figures; everything in the
+parlor, everything he had painted, was Josephina, had her face, or
+showed traces of her with the vagueness of a memory.
+
+He passed to the adjoining parlor and there, too, his wife's face,
+painted by him, came to meet him among other pictures by his friends.
+
+When had he done all that? He could not remember; he was surprised at
+the enormous quantity of work he had performed unconsciously. He seemed
+to have spent his whole life painting Josephina.
+
+Afterwards, in all the hallways, in all the rooms where pictures were
+hung, his wife met his gaze, under the most varied aspects, frowning or
+smiling, beautiful or sad with sickness. They were sketched, simple,
+unfinished charcoal drawings of her head in the corner of a canvas, but
+always that glance followed him, sometimes with an expression of
+melancholy tenderness, sometimes with intense reproach. Where had his
+eyes been? He had lived amid all this without seeing it. Every day he
+had passed by Josephina without noticing her. His wife was resurrected;
+henceforth, she would sit down at table, she would enter his chamber, he
+would pass through the house always under the gaze of two eyes which in
+the past had pierced into his soul.
+
+The dead woman was not dead; she hovered about him, revived by his hand.
+He could not take a step without seeing her face on every side. She
+greeted him from above the doors, from the ends of the rooms she seemed
+to call him.
+
+In his three studios, his surprise was still greater. All his most
+intimate painting, which he had done as study, from impulse, without any
+desire for sale, was stored away there, and all was a memory of the dead
+woman. The pictures which dazzled the callers were hung low, down on the
+level of the eyes, on easels, or fastened to the wall, amid the
+sumptuous furniture; up above, reaching to the ceiling were arranged the
+studies, memories, unframed canvases, like old, forgotten works, and in
+this collection at the first glance Renovales saw the enigmatic face
+rising towards him.
+
+He had lived without lifting his eyes, accustomed as he was to
+everything about him, and looking around, without seeing, without
+noticing those women, different in appearance but alike in expression,
+who watched him from above. And the countess had been there several
+afternoons, to see him alone in the studio! And the Persian silk
+draperies, hung on lances before the deep divan, had not hidden them
+from that sad, fixed gaze which seemed to multiply in the upper stretch
+of the walls.
+
+To forget his remorse, he amused himself by counting the canvases which
+reproduced his wife's dainty little face. They were many--the whole life
+of an artist. He tried to remember when and where he had painted them.
+In the first days of his love, he felt that he must paint her, with an
+irresistible impulse to transfer to the canvas everything he delighted
+to see, everything he loved. Afterwards, it had been a desire to flatter
+her, to coax her with a false show of affection, to convince her that
+she was the only object of his artistic worship, copying her in a vague
+likeness, giving to her features, marred by illness, a soft veil of
+idealism. He could not live without working and, like many painters, he
+used as models the people around him. His daughter had carried to her
+new home a load of paintings, all the pictures, rough sketches,
+water-colors and panels which represented her from the time she used to
+play with the cat, dressing him in baby clothes, until she was a proud
+young lady, courted by Soldevilla and the man who was now her husband.
+
+The mother had remained there, rising after death about the artist in
+oppressive profusion. All the little incidents in life had given
+Renovales an occasion to paint new pictures. He recalled his enthusiasm
+every time he saw her in a new dress. The colors changed her; she was a
+new woman, so he would declare with a vehemence which his wife took for
+admiration and which was merely the desire for a model.
+
+Josephina's whole life had been fixed by her husband's hand. In one
+canvas she appeared dressed in white, walking through a meadow with the
+poetic dreaminess of an Ophelia; in another, wearing a large, plumed hat
+covered with jewels, she showed the self-satisfaction of a
+manufacturer's wife, secure in her well-being; a black curtain served as
+a background for her bare neck and shoulders. In another picture she had
+her sleeves rolled up; a white apron covered her from her breast to her
+feet, on her forehead was a little wrinkle of care and weariness, and in
+her whole mien the carelessness of one who has no time to attend to the
+adornment of her person. This last was the portrait of the bitter days,
+the image of the courageous housekeeper, without servants, working with
+her delicate hands in a wretched attic, striving that the artist might
+lack nothing, that the petty annoyances of life might not come to
+distract him from his supreme efforts for success.
+
+This portrait filled the artist with the melancholy which the memory of
+bitter days inspires in the midst of comfort. His gratitude toward his
+brave companion brought with it once more remorse.
+
+"Oh, Josephina! Josephina!"
+
+When Cotoner arrived, he found the master lying face down on the couch
+with his head in his hands, as if he were asleep. He tried to interest
+him by talking about the function of the day before. A great success;
+the papers spoke of him and his speech, declaring that he was a great
+writer and could win as marked a success in literature as in art. Had he
+not read them?
+
+Renovales answered with a bored expression. He had found them, when he
+went out in the morning, on a table in the reception-room. He had cast a
+glance at his picture surrounded by the solid columns of his speech but
+he had put off reading the praises until later. They did not interest
+him; he was thinking of something else--he was sad.
+
+And in answer to Cotoner's anxious questions, who thought he must be
+ill, he said quietly:
+
+"I am well enough. It's melancholy. I'm tired of doing nothing. I want
+to work and haven't the strength."
+
+Suddenly he interrupted his old friend, pointing to all the portraits
+of Josephina, as if they were new works which he had just produced.
+
+Cotoner expressed surprise. He knew them all; they had been there for
+years. What was strange about them?
+
+The master told him of his recent surprise. He had lived beside them
+without seeing them, he had just discovered them two hours before. And
+Cotoner laughed.
+
+"You are rather unsettled, Mariano. You live without noticing what is
+around you. That is why you don't know of Soldevilla's marriage to a
+rich girl. The poor boy was disappointed because his master was not
+present at the wedding."
+
+Renovales shrugged his shoulders. What did he care for such follies?
+There was a long pause and the master, pensive and sad, suddenly raised
+his head with a determined expression.
+
+"What do you think of those portraits, Pepe?" he asked anxiously. "Is it
+she? I couldn't have made a mistake in painting them, I couldn't have
+seen her different from what she really was, could I?"
+
+Cotoner broke out laughing. Really, the master was out of his mind. What
+questions! Those portraits were marvels, like all of his work. But
+Renovales insisted with the impatience of doubt. His opinion! Were those
+Josephinas like his wife!
+
+"Exactly," said the Bohemian. "Why, man alive, their fidelity to life is
+the most astonishing thing about your portraits!"
+
+He declared this confidently, but a shadow of doubt worried him. Yes, it
+was Josephina, but there was something unusual, idealized about her. Her
+features looked the same, but they had an inner light that made them
+more beautiful. It was a defect he had always found in these pictures,
+but he said nothing.
+
+"And she," insisted the master, "was she really beautiful? What did you
+think of her as a woman? Tell me, Pepe,--without hesitating. It's
+strange, I can't remember very well what she was like."
+
+Cotoner was disconcerted by these questions, and answered with some
+embarrassment. What an odd thing! Josephina was very good--an angel; he
+always remembered her with gratitude. He had wept for her as for a
+mother, though she might almost have been his daughter. She had always
+been very considerate and thoughtful of the poor Bohemian.
+
+"Not that," interrupted the master. "I want to know if you thought she
+was beautiful, if she really was beautiful."
+
+"Why, man, yes," said Cotoner resolutely. "She was beautiful or, rather,
+attractive. At the end she seemed a bit changed. Her illness! But all in
+all, an angel."
+
+And the master, calmed by these words, stood looking at his own works.
+
+"Yes, she was very beautiful," he said slowly, without turning his eyes
+from the canvases. "Now I recognize it; now I see her better. It's
+strange, Pepe. It seems as if I have found Josephina to-day after a long
+journey. I had forgotten her; I was no longer certain what her face was
+like."
+
+There was another long pause, and once more the master began to ply his
+friend with anxious questions.
+
+"Did she love me? Do you think she really loved me? Was it love that
+made her sometimes act so--strangely?"
+
+This time Cotoner did not hesitate as he had at the former questions.
+
+"Love you? Wildly, Mariano. As no man has been loved in this world. All
+that there was between you was jealousy--too much affection. I know it
+better than anyone else; old friends, like me, who go in and out of the
+house just like old dogs, are treated with intimacy and hear things the
+husband does not know. Believe me, Mariano, no one will ever love you as
+she did. Her sulky words were only passing clouds. I am sure you no
+longer remember them. What did not pass was the other, the love she bore
+you. I am positive; you know that she told me everything, that I was the
+only person she could tolerate toward the end."
+
+Renovales seemed to thank his friend for these words with a glance of
+joy.
+
+They went out to walk at the end of the afternoon, going toward the
+center of Madrid. Renovales talked of their youth, of their days in
+Rome. He laughed as he reminded Cotoner of his famous stock of Popes, he
+recalled the funny shows in the studios, the noisy entertainments, and
+then, after he was married, the evenings of friendly intercourse in that
+pretty little dining-room on the Via Margutta; the arrival of the
+Bohemian and the other artists of his circle to drink a cup of tea with
+the young couple; the loud discussions over painting, which made the
+neighbors protest, while she, his Josephina, still surprised at finding
+herself the mistress of a household, without her mother, and surrounded
+by men, smiled timidly to them all, thinking that those fearful
+comrades, with hair like highwaymen but as innocent and peevish as
+children, were very funny and interesting.
+
+"Those were the days, Pepe! Youth, which we never appreciate till it has
+gone!"
+
+Walking straight ahead, without knowing where they were going, absorbed
+in their conversation and their memories, they suddenly found themselves
+at the Puerta del Sol. Night had fallen; the electric lights were
+coming out; the shop windows threw patches of light on the sidewalks.
+
+Cotoner looked at the clock on the Government Building.
+
+"Aren't you going to the Alberca woman's house to-night?"
+
+Renovales seemed to awaken. Yes, he must go; they expected him. But he
+was not going. His friend looked at him with a shocked expression, as if
+he considered it a serious error to scorn a dinner.
+
+The painter seemed to lack the courage to spend the evening between
+Concha and her husband. He thought of her with a sort of aversion; he
+felt as if he might brutally repel her constant caresses and tell
+everything to the husband in an outburst of frankness. It was a
+disgrace, treachery--that life _à trois_ which the society woman
+accepted as the happiest of states.
+
+"It's intolerable," he said to dissipate his friend's surprise. "I can't
+stand her. She's a regular barnacle, and won't let me go for a minute."
+
+He had never spoken to Cotoner of his affair with the Alberca woman, but
+he did not have to tell him anything, he assumed that he knew.
+
+"But she's pretty, Mariano," said he. "A wonderful woman! You know I
+admire her. You might use her for your Greek picture."
+
+The master cast at him a glance of pity for his ignorance. He felt a
+desire to scoff at her, to injure her, thus justifying his indifference.
+
+"Nothing but a façade. A face and a figure."
+
+And bending over toward his friend he whispered to him seriously as if
+he were revealing the secret of a terrible crime.
+
+"She's knock-kneed. A regular swindle."
+
+A satyr-like smile spread over Cotoner's lips and his ears wriggled. It
+was the joy of a chaste man; the satisfaction of knowing the secret
+defects of a beauty who was out of his reach.
+
+The master did not want to leave his friend. He needed him, he looked
+at him with tender sympathy, seeing in him something of his dead wife.
+When she was sad, he had been her confidant. When her nerves were on
+edge, this simple man's words ended the crisis in a flood of tears. With
+whom could he talk about her better?
+
+"We will dine together, Pepe; we will go to the _Italianos_--a Roman
+banquet, _ravioli_, _piccata_, anything you want and a bottle of Chianti
+or two, as many as you can drink, and at the end sparkling Asti, better
+than champagne. Does that suit you, old man?"
+
+Arm in arm they walked along, their heads high, a smile on their lips,
+like two young painters, eager to celebrate a recent sale with a
+gluttonous relief from their misery.
+
+Renovales went back into his memories and poured them out in a torrent.
+He reminded Cotoner of a _trattoria_ in an alley in Rome, beyond the
+statue of Pasquino, before you reach the Via Governo Vecchio, a chop
+house of ecclesiastical quiet, run by the former cook of a cardinal. The
+shelves of the establishment were always covered with the headgear of
+the profession, priestly tiles. The merriment of the artists shocked the
+sedate frugality of the habitues, priests of the Papal palace or
+visitors who were in Rome scheming advancement; loud-mouthed lawyers in
+dirty frock-coats from the nearby Palace of Justice, loaded with papers.
+
+"What _maccheroni!_ Remember, Pepe? How poor Josephina liked it!"
+
+They used to reach the _trattoria_ at night in a merry company--she on
+his arm and around them the friends whose admiration for the promising
+young painter attracted them to him. Josephina worshiped the mysteries
+of the kitchen, the traditional secrets of the solemn table of the
+princes of the Church, which had come down to the street, taking refuge
+in that little room. On the white table cloth trembled the amber
+reflection of the wine of Orvieto in decanters, a thick, yellow, golden
+liquid, of clerical sweetness, a drink of old-time pontiffs, which
+descended to the stomach like fire and more than once had mounted to
+heads covered with the tiara.
+
+On moonlit nights, they used to go from there and walk to the Colosseum
+to look at the gigantic, monstrous ruin under the flood of blue light.
+Josephina, shaking with nervous excitement, went down into the dark
+tunnels, groping along among the fallen stones, till she was on the open
+slope, facing the silent circle, which seemed to enclose the corpse of a
+whole people. Looking around with anxiety, she thought of the terrible
+beasts which had trod upon that sand. Suddenly came a frightful roar and
+a black beast leaped forth from the deep vomitory. Josephina clung to
+her husband, with a shriek of terror, and all laughed. It was Simpson,
+an American painter, who bent over, walking on all fours, to attack his
+companions with fierce cries.
+
+"Do you remember, Pepe?" Renovales kept saying, "What days! What joy!
+What a fine companion the little girl was before her illness saddened
+her!"
+
+They dined, talking of their youth, mingling with their memories the
+image of the dead. Afterwards, they walked the streets till midnight,
+and Renovales was always going back to those days, recalling his
+Josephina, as if he had spent his life worshiping her. Cotoner was tired
+of the conversation and said "Good-by" to the master. What new hobby was
+this? Poor Josephina was very interesting, but they had spent the whole
+evening without talking of anything else, as though memory of her was
+the only thing in the world.
+
+Renovales started home impatiently; he took a cab to get there sooner.
+He felt as anxious as if some one were waiting for him; that showy
+house, cold and solitary before, seemed animated with a spirit he could
+not define, a beloved soul which filled it, pervading all like perfume.
+
+As he entered, preceded by the sleepy servant, his first glance was for
+the water-color. He smiled; he wanted to bid good-night to that head
+whose eyes rested on him.
+
+For all the Josephinas who met his gaze, rising from the shadow of the
+walls, as he turned on the electric lights in the parlors and hallways,
+he had the same smile and greeting. He no longer was uneasy in the
+presence of those faces which he had looked at in the morning with
+surprise and fear. She saw him; she read his thoughts; she forgave him,
+surely. She had always been so good!
+
+He hesitated a moment on his way, wishing to go to the studios and turn
+on the lights. There he could see her full length, in all her grace; he
+would talk to her, he would ask her forgiveness in the deep silence of
+those great rooms. But the master stopped. What was he thinking of? Was
+he going to lose his senses? He drew his hand across his forehead, as if
+he wanted to wipe these ideas out of his mind. No doubt it was the Asti
+that led him to such absurdities. To sleep!
+
+When he was in the dark, lying in his daughter's little bed, he felt
+uneasy. He could not sleep, he was uncomfortable. He was tempted to go
+out of the room and take refuge in the deserted bed-chamber as if only
+there could he find rest and sleep. Oh, the Venetian bed, that princely
+piece of furniture which kept his whole history, where he had whispered
+words of love; where they had talked so many times in low tones of his
+longing for glory and wealth; where his daughter was born!
+
+With the energy which showed in all his whims, the master put on his
+clothes, and quietly, as if he feared to be overheard by his servant
+who slept nearby, made his way to the chamber.
+
+He turned the key with the caution of a thief, and advanced on tiptoe,
+under the soft, pink light which an old lantern shed from the center of
+the ceiling. He carefully stretched out the mattresses on the abandoned
+bed. There were no sheets nor pillows. The room so long deserted was
+cold. What a pleasant night he was going to spend! How well he would
+sleep there! The gold-embroidered cushions from a sofa would serve as a
+pillow. He wrapped himself in an overcoat and got into bed, dressed,
+putting out the light so as not to see reality, to dream, peopling the
+darkness with the sweet deceits of his fancy.
+
+On those mattresses, Josephina had slept. He did not see her as in the
+last days,--sick, emaciated, worn with physical suffering. His mind
+repelled that painful image, bent on beautiful illusions. The Josephina
+whom he saw, the Josephina within him, was the other, of the first days
+of their love, and not as she had been in reality but as he had seen
+her, as he had painted her.
+
+His memory passed over a great stretch of time, dark and stormy; it
+leaped from the regret of the present to the happy days of youth. He no
+longer recalled the years of trying confinement, when they quarreled
+together, unable to follow the same path. They were unimportant
+disturbances in life. He thought only of her smiling kindness, her
+generosity, and submissiveness. How tenderly they had lived together for
+a part of their life, in that bed which now knew only the loneliness of
+his body.
+
+The artist shivered under his inadequate covering. In this abnormal
+situation, exterior impressions called up memories--fragments of the
+past that slowly came to his mind. The cold made him think of the rainy
+nights in Venice, when it poured for hour after hour on the narrow
+alleys and deserted canals in the deep, solemn silence of a city without
+horses, without wheels, without any sound of life, except the lapping of
+the solitary water on the marble stairways. They were in the same calm,
+under the warm eider-down, amid the same furniture which he now half saw
+in the shadow.
+
+Through the slits of the lowered blind shone the glow of the lamp which
+lighted the nearby canal. On the ceiling a spot of light flickered with
+the reflection of the dead water, constantly crossed by lines of shadow.
+They, closely embraced, watched this play of light and water above them.
+They knew that outside it was cold and damp; they exulted in their
+physical warmth, in the selfishness of being together, with that
+delicious sense of comfort, buried in silence as if the world were a
+thing of the past, as if their chamber were a warm oasis, in the midst
+of cold and darkness.
+
+Sometimes they heard a mournful cry in the silence. _Aooo!_ It was the
+gondolier giving warning before he turned the corner. Across the spot of
+light which shimmered on the ceiling slipped a black, Lilliputian
+gondola, a shadow toy, on the stern of which bent a manikin the size of
+a fly, wielding the oar. And, thinking of those who passed in the rain,
+lashed by the icy gusts, they experienced a new pleasure and clung
+closer to each other under the soft cider-down and their lips met,
+disturbing the calm of their rest with the noisy insolence of youth and
+love.
+
+Renovales no longer felt cold. He turned restlessly on the mattresses;
+the metallic embroidery of the cushions stuck in his face; he stretched
+out his arms in the darkness, and the silence was broken by a despairing
+cry, the lament of a child who demands the impossible, who asks for the
+moon.
+
+"Josephina! Josephina!"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+One morning the painter sent an urgent summons to Cotoner and the latter
+arrived in great alarm at the terms of the message.
+
+"It's nothing serious," said Renovales. "I want you to tell me where
+Josephina was buried. I want to see her."
+
+It was a desire which had been slowly taking form in his mind during
+several nights; a whim of the long hours of sleeplessness through which
+he dragged in the darkness.
+
+More than a week before, he had moved into the large chamber, choosing
+among the bed linen, with a painstaking care that surprised the
+servants, the most worn sheets, which called up old memories with their
+embroidery. He did not find in this linen that perfume of the closets
+which had disturbed him so deeply; but there was something in them, the
+illusion, the certainty that she had many a time touched them.
+
+After soberly and severely telling Cotoner of his wish, Renovales felt
+that he must offer some excuse. It was disgraceful that he did not know
+where Josephina was; that he had not yet gone to visit her. His grief at
+her death had left him helpless and afterward, the long journey.
+
+"You always know things, Pepe! You had charge of the funeral
+arrangements. Tell me where she is; take me to see her."
+
+Up to that time he had not thought of her remains. He remembered the day
+of the funeral, his dramatic grief which kept him in a corner with his
+face buried in his hands. His intimate friends, the elect, who
+penetrated to his retreat, clad in black, and wearing gloomy faces,
+caught his hand and pressed it effusively. "Courage, Mariano. Be strong,
+master." And outside the house, a constant trampling of horses' feet;
+the iron fence black with the curious crowd, a double file of carriages
+as far as the eye could see; reporters going from group to group, taking
+down names.
+
+All Madrid was there. And they had carried her away to the slow step of
+a pair of horses with waving plumes, amid the undertaker's men in white
+wigs and gold batons--and he had forgotten her, had felt no interest in
+seeing the corner of the cemetery where she was buried forever, under
+the glare of the sun, under the night rains that dripped upon her grave.
+He cursed himself now for this outrageous neglect.
+
+"Tell me where she is, Pepe. Take me. I want to see her."
+
+He implored with the eagerness of remorse; he wanted to see her once, as
+soon as possible, like a sinner who fears death and cries for
+absolution.
+
+Cotoner acceded to this immediate trip. She was in the Almudena
+cemetery, which had been closed for some time. Only those who had long
+standing titles to a lot went there now. Cotoner had desired to bury
+Josephina beside her mother in the same inclosure where the stone that
+covered the "lamented genius of diplomacy" was growing tarnished. He
+wanted her to rest among her own.
+
+On the way, Renovales felt a sort of anguish. Like a sleep-walker he saw
+the streets of the city passing by the carriage window, then they went
+down a steep hill, ill-kempt gardens, where loafers were sleeping,
+leaning against the trees, or women were combing their hair in the sun;
+a bridge; wretched suburbs with tumble-down houses; then the open
+country, hilly roads and at last a grove of cypress trees beyond an
+adobe wall and the tops of marble buildings, angels stretching out their
+wings with a trumpet at their lips, great crosses, torch-holders mounted
+on tripods, and a pure, blue sky which seemed to smile with superhuman
+indifference at the excitement of that ant, named Renovales.
+
+He was going to see her; to step on the ground which covered her body;
+to breathe an atmosphere in which there was still perhaps some of that
+warmth which was the breath of the dead woman's soul. What would he say
+to her?
+
+As he entered the graveyard he looked at the keeper, an ugly, dismal old
+fellow, as pale and yellow and greasy as a wax candle. That man lived
+constantly near Josephina! He was seized with generous gratitude; he had
+to restrain himself, thinking of his companion, or he would have given
+him all the money he had with him.
+
+Their steps resounded in the silence. They felt the murmuring calm of an
+abandoned garden about them, where there were more pavilions and statues
+than trees. They went down ruined colonnades, which echoed their steps
+strangely; over slabs which sounded hollow under their feet,--the void,
+trembling at the light touch of life.
+
+The dead who slept there were dead indeed, without the least
+resurrection of memory, completely deserted, sharing in the universal
+decay,--unnamed, separated from life forever. From the beehive close by,
+no one came to give new life with tears and offerings to the ephemeral
+personality they once had, to the name which marked them for a moment.
+
+Wreaths hung from the crosses, black and unraveled, with a swarm of
+insects in their fragments. The exuberant vegetation, where no one ever
+passed, stretched in every direction, loosening the tombstones with its
+roots, springing the steps of the resounding stairways. The rain, slowly
+filtering through the ground, had produced hollows. Some of the slabs
+were cracked open, revealing deep holes.
+
+They had to walk carefully, fearing that the hollow ground would
+suddenly open; they had to avoid the depressions where a stone with
+letters of pale gold and noble coats-of-arms lay half on its side.
+
+The painter walked trembling with the sadness of an immense
+disappointment, questioning the value of his greatest interests. And
+this was life! Human beauty ended like this! This was all that the human
+mind came to and here it must stop in all its pride!
+
+"Here it is!" said Cotoner.
+
+They had entered between two rows of tombs so close together that as
+they passed they brushed against the old ornaments which crumbled and
+fell at the touch.
+
+It was a simple tomb, a sort of coffin of white marble which rose a few
+inches above the ground, with an elevation at one end, like the bolster
+of a bed and surmounted by a cross.
+
+Renovales was cold. There was Josephina! He read the inscription several
+times, as if he could not convince himself. It was she; the letters
+reproduced her name, with a brief lament of her inconsolable husband,
+which seemed to him senseless, artificial, disgraceful.
+
+He had come trembling with anxiety at the thought of the terrible moment
+when he should behold Josephina's last resting place. To feel that he
+was near her, to tread upon the ground in which she rested! He would not
+be able to resist this critical moment, he would weep like a child, he
+would fall on his knees, sobbing in deadly anguish.
+
+Well, he was there; the tomb was before his eyes and still, they were
+dry; they looked about coldly in surprise.
+
+She was there! He knew it from his friend's statement, from the
+declamatory inscription on the tomb, but nothing warned him of her
+presence. He remained indifferent, looking curiously at the adjoining
+graves, filled with a monstrous desire to laugh, seeing in death only
+his sardonic buffoon's mask.
+
+At one side, a gentleman who rested under the endless list of his titles
+and honors, a sort of Count of Alberca, who had fallen asleep in the
+solemnity of his greatness, waiting for the angel's trumpet-blast to
+appear before the Lord with all his parchments and crosses. On the
+other, a general who rotted under a marble slab, engraved with cannon,
+guns and banners, as though he hoped to terrify death. In what ludicrous
+promiscuity Josephina had come to sleep her last sleep, mingled with,
+forms she had not known in life! They were her eternal, her final
+lovers; they carried her off from his very presence and forever,
+indifferent to the pressing concerns of the living. Oh, Death! What a
+cruel mocker! The earth! How cold and cynical!
+
+He was sad and disgusted at human insignificance--but he did not weep.
+He saw only the external and material--the form, always the concern of
+his thoughts. Standing before the tomb he felt merely his vulgar
+meanness, with a sort of shame. She was his wife; the wife of a great
+artist.
+
+He thought of the most famous sculptors, all friends of his; he would
+talk to them, they should erect an imposing sepulcher with weeping
+statues, symbolical of fidelity, gentleness and love, a sepulcher worthy
+of the companion of Renovales. And nothing more; his thought went no
+farther; his imagination could not pass beyond the hard marble nor
+penetrate the hidden mystery. The grave was speechless and empty, in the
+air there was nothing which spoke to the soul of the painter.
+
+He remained indifferent, unmoved by any emotion, without ceasing for a
+single moment to see reality. The cemetery was a hideous, gloomy,
+repulsive place, with an odor of decay. Renovales thought he could
+perceive a stench of putrefaction scattered in the wind which bent the
+pointed tops of the cypresses, and swayed the old wreaths and the
+branches of the rose bushes.
+
+He looked at Cotoner with a sort of displeasure. He was to blame for his
+coldness. His presence was a check on him which prevented him from
+showing his feelings. Though a friend, he was a stranger, an obstacle
+between him and the dead. He interfered with that silent dialogue of
+love and forgiveness of which the master had dreamed as he came. He
+would come back alone. Perhaps the cemetery would be different in
+solitude.
+
+And he came back; he came back the next day. The keeper greeted him with
+a smile, realizing that he was a profitable visitor.
+
+The cemetery seemed larger, more imposing in the silence of the bright,
+quiet morning. He had no one to talk with; he heard no human sound but
+that of his own steps. He went up stairways, crossed galleries, leaving
+behind him his indifference, thinking anxiously that every step took him
+farther from the living, that the gate with its greedy keeper was
+already far away and that he was the only living being, the only one who
+thought and could feel fear in the mournful city of thousands and
+thousands of beings, wrapped in a mystery which made them imposing amid
+the strange, dull sounds of the land beyond that terrifies with the
+blackness of its bottomless abyss.
+
+When he reached Josephina's grave, he took off his hat.
+
+No one. The trees and the rose bushes trembled in the wind among the
+cross paths. Some birds were twittering above him in an acacia, and the
+sound of life, disturbing the rustling of the solitary vegetation, shed
+a certain calm over the painter's spirit, blotted out the childish fear
+he had felt before he reached there, as he crossed the echoing pavements
+of the colonnades.
+
+For a long time he remained motionless, absorbed in the contemplation of
+that marble case obliquely cut by a ray of sunlight, one part golden,
+the other blue in the shadow. Suddenly he shivered, as if he had
+awakened at the sound of a voice,--his own. He was talking, aloud,
+driven to cry out his thoughts, to stir this deathly silence with
+something that meant life.
+
+"Josephina. It is I. Do you forgive me?"
+
+It was a childish longing to hear the voice from beyond that might pour
+on his soul a balm of forgiveness and forgetting; a desire of humbling
+himself, of weeping, of having her listen to him, smile to him from the
+depth of the void, at the great revolution which had been carried out in
+his spirit. He wanted to tell her--and he did tell her silently with the
+speech of his feelings--that he loved her, that he had resuscitated her
+in his thoughts, now that he had lost her forever, with a love which he
+had never had for her in her earthly life. He felt ashamed before her
+grave; ashamed of the difference of their fates.
+
+He begged her forgiveness for living, for still feeling vigorous and
+young, for now loving her without reality, in a wild hope, when he had
+been cold and indifferent at her departure, with his thoughts on another
+woman, hoping for her death with criminal craving. Wretch! And he was
+still alive! And she, so kind, so sweet, buried forever, lost in the
+depths of eternal, ruthless death!
+
+He wept; at last he wept those hot, sincere tears which compel
+forgiveness. It was the weeping which he had so long desired. Now he
+felt that they approached each other, that they were almost together,
+separated only by a strip of marble and a little earth. His fancy saw
+her poor remains and in their decay he loved them, he worshiped them
+with a calm passion that rose above earthly miseries. Nothing which had
+once been Josephina's could cause him repugnance or horror. If he could
+but open that white case! If he could kiss her, take her ashes with him,
+that they might go with him on his pilgrimage, like the household gods
+of the ancients! He no longer saw the cemetery, he did not hear the
+birds nor the rustling of the branches; he seemed to live in a cloud,
+looking only at that white grave, the marble slab,--the last resting
+place of his beloved.
+
+She forgave him; her body rose before him, such as it had been in her
+youth, as he had painted it. Her deep eyes were fixed on his, eyes that
+shone with love. He seemed to hear her childish voice laughing, admiring
+little trifles, as in the happy days. It was a resurrection,--the image
+of the dead woman was before him, formed no doubt by the invisible atoms
+of her being which floated over her grave, by something of the essence
+of her life which still fluttered around the material remains, reluctant
+to say farewell before they started on the way that leads to the depths
+of the infinite.
+
+His tears continued to fall in the silence, in sweet relief; his voice,
+broken by sobs, stilled the birds with fear. "Josephina! Josephina!" And
+the echo answered with dull, mocking cries, from the smooth walls of the
+mausoleums, from the invisible end of the colonnades.
+
+The artist could not resist the temptation to step over the rusted
+chains which surrounded the grave. To feel her nearer! To overcome the
+short distance which separated them! To mock death with a loving kiss of
+intense gratitude for forgiveness!
+
+The huge frame of the master covered the slab of marble, his arms
+encircled it as if he would pick it up from the ground and carry it away
+with him. His lips eagerly sought the highest part of the stone.
+
+He wished to find the spot which covered her face and he began to kiss
+it, moving his head as if he were going to dash it against the marble.
+
+A sensation of stone, warmed by the sun, on his lips; a taste of dust,
+insipid and repulsive in his mouth. Renovales sat up, rose to his feet
+as if he had awakened, as if the cemetery, until then invisible, was
+suddenly restored to reality. The faint odor of decay once more struck
+him.
+
+Now he saw the grave, as he had seen it the day before. He no longer
+wept. The immense disappointment dried his tears, though within him he
+felt the longing for weeping increased. Horrible awakening! Josephina
+was not there; only the void was about him. It was useless to seek the
+past in the field of death. Memories could not be aroused in that cold
+ground, stirred by worms and decay. Oh, where had he come to seek his
+dreams! From what a foul dunghill he had tried to raise the roses of his
+memories!
+
+In fancy he saw her beneath that repugnant marble in all the
+repulsiveness of death, and this vision left him cold, indifferent. What
+had he to do with such wretchedness? No; Josephina was not there. She
+was truly dead, and if he ever was to see her it would not be beside her
+grave.
+
+Once more he wept--not with external tears but within; he mourned the
+bitterness of solitude, the inability to exchange a single thought with
+her. He had so many things to tell her which were burning his soul! How
+he would talk with her, if some mysterious power would bring her back
+for an instant. He would implore her forgiveness; he would throw himself
+at her feet, lamenting the error of his life, the painful deceit of
+having remained beside her, indifferent, fostering hopes which had no
+fulfillment, only to groan now in the torment of irreparable loss, with
+a mad, thirsting love which worshiped the woman in death after scoring
+her in life.
+
+He would swear a thousand times the truth of this posthumous worship,
+this desire aroused by death. And then he would lay her once more in her
+eternal bed, and would depart in peace after his wild confession.
+
+But it was impossible. The silence between them would last forever. He
+must remain for all eternity with this confession of his thoughts,
+unable to tell it to her, crushed beneath its weight. She had gone away
+with rancor and scorn in her soul, forgetting their first love, and she
+would never know that it had blossomed once more after her death.
+
+She could not cast one glance back; she did not exist; she would never
+again exist. All that he was doing and thinking, the sleepless nights
+when he called to her in loving appeal, the long hours when he stood
+gazing at her pictures,--all would be unknown to her. And when he died
+in his turn, the silence and loneliness would be still greater. The
+things which he had been unable to tell her would die with him and they
+would both crumble away in the earth, strangers to each other,
+prolonging their grievous error in eternity, unable to approach each
+other, or see each other, without a saving word, condemned to the
+fearful, unbounded void, over whose limitless firmament passed unnoticed
+the desires and griefs of men.
+
+The unhappy artist walked up and down enraged at his impotence. What
+cruelty surrounded them? What dark, hard-hearted, implacable mockery was
+that which drove them toward one another and then separated them
+forever, forever! forbidding them to exchange a look of forgiveness, a
+word to rectify their errors and to permit them to return to their
+eternal sleep with new peace?
+
+Lies--deceit that hovers about man, like a protecting atmosphere that
+shields him in his path through the void of life. That grave with its
+inscription was a lie; she was not there; it contained merely a few
+remnants, like those of all the others, which no one could recognize,
+not even he, who had loved her so dearly.
+
+His despair made him lift his eyes to the pure, shining sky. Ah, the
+heavens! A lie, too! That heavenly blue with its golden rays and
+fanciful clouds was an imperceptible film, an illusion of the eyes.
+Beyond the deceitful web which wraps the earth was the true heaven,
+endless space, and it was black, ominously obscure, with the sputtering
+spark of burning tears, of infinite worlds, little lamps of eternity in
+whose flame lived other swarms of invisible atoms, and the icy, blind,
+and cruel soul of shadowy space laughed at their passions and longings,
+at the lies they fabricated incessantly to protect their ephemeral
+existence, striving to prolong it with the illusion of an immortal soul.
+
+All were lies which death came to unmask, interrupting men's course on
+the pleasant path of their illusions, throwing them out of it with as
+much indifference as their feet had crushed and driven to flight the
+lines of ants which advanced amid the grass that was sowed with bony
+remains.
+
+Renovales was forced to flee. What was he doing there? What did that
+deserted, empty spot of earth mean to him? Before he went away, with the
+firm determination not to return again, he looked around the grave for
+a flower, a few blades of grass, something to take with him as a
+remembrance. No, Josephina was not there; he was sure, but like a lover,
+he felt that longing, that passionate respect for anything which the
+woman he loves had touched.
+
+He scorned a cluster of wild-flowers which grew in abundance at the foot
+of the grave. He wanted them from near the head and he picked a few
+white buds close to the cross, thinking that perhaps their roots had
+touched her face, that they preserved in their petals something of her
+eyes, of her lips.
+
+He went home downcast and sad, with a void in his mind and death in his
+soul.
+
+But in the warm air of the house, his love came forth to meet him; he
+saw her beside him, smiling from the walls, rising out of the great
+canvases. Renovales felt a warm breath on his face, as if those pictures
+were breathing at once, filling the house with the essence of memories
+which seemed to float in the atmosphere. Everything spoke to him of her,
+everything was filled with that vague perfume of the past. Over there on
+the graveyard hill was the wretched perishable covering. He would not
+return. What was the use? He felt her around him, all that was left of
+her in the world was enclosed in the house, as the strong odor remains
+in a broken, forgotten perfume bottle. No, not in the house. She was in
+him, he felt her presence within him, like those wandering souls of the
+legends who took refuge in another's body, struggling to share the
+dwelling with the soul which was mistress of the body. They had not
+lived in vain so many years together--at first united by love and
+afterward by habit. For half a lifetime, their bodies had slept in close
+contact, exchanging through their open pores that warmth which is like
+the breath of the soul. She had taken away a part of the artist's life.
+In her remains, crumbling in the lonely cemetery, there was a part of
+the master and he, in turn, felt something strange and mysterious which
+chained him to her memory, which made him always long for that body--the
+complement of his own--which had already vanished in the void.
+
+Renovales shut himself up in the house, with a taciturn air and a gloomy
+expression which terrified his valet. If Señor Cotoner came, he was to
+tell him that the master had gone out. If letters came from the
+countess, he could leave them in an old terra-cotta jar in the anteroom,
+where the neglected calling cards were piling up. If it was she who
+came, he was to close the door. He did not want anything to distract
+him. Dinner should be served in the studio.
+
+And he worked alone, without a model, with a tenacity which kept him
+standing before the canvas until it was dark. Sometimes, when the
+servant entered at nightfall, he found the luncheon untouched on the
+table. In the evening the master ate in silence in the dining-room, from
+sheer animal necessity, not seeing what he was eating, his eyes gazing
+into space.
+
+Cotoner, somewhat piqued at this unusual régime which prevented him from
+entering the studio, would call in the evening and try in vain to
+interest him with news of the world outside. He observed in the master's
+eyes a strange light, a gleam of insanity.
+
+"How goes the work?"
+
+Renovales answered vaguely. He could see it soon--in a few days.
+
+His expression of indifference was repeated when he heard the Countess
+of Alberca mentioned. Cotoner described her alarm and astonishment at
+the master's behavior. She had sent for him to find out about Mariano,
+to complain, with tears in her eyes, of his absence. She had twice been
+to the door of his house and had not been able to get in; she
+complained of the servant and that mysterious work. At least he ought to
+write to her, answer her letters, full of tender laments, which she did
+not suspect were lying unopened and neglected in a pile of yellow cards.
+The artist listened to this with a shrug of the shoulders as if he was
+hearing about the sorrows of a distant planet.
+
+"Let's go and see Milita," he said. "There isn't any opera to-night."
+
+In his retirement the only thing which connected him with the outside
+world was his desire to see his daughter, to talk to her, as if he loved
+her with new affection. She was his Josephina's flesh, she had lived in
+her. She was healthy and strong, like him, nothing in her appearance
+reminded him of the other, but her sex bound her closely with the
+beloved image of her mother.
+
+He listened to Milita with smiles of pleasure, grateful for the interest
+she manifested in his health.
+
+"Are you ill, papa? You look poorly. I don't like your appearance. You
+are working too much."
+
+But he calmed her, swinging his strong arms, swelling out his lusty
+chest. He had never felt better. And with the minuteness of a
+good-natured grandfather he inquired about all the little displeasures
+of her life. Her husband spent the day with his friends. She grew tired
+of staying at home and her only amusement was making calls or going
+shopping. And after that came a complaint, always the same, which the
+father divined at her first words. López de Sosa was selfish, niggardly
+toward her. His spendthrift habits never went beyond his own pleasures
+and his own person; he economized in his wife's expenses. He loved her
+in spite of that. Milita did not venture to deny it; no mistresses or
+unfaithfulness. She would be likely to stand that! But he had no money
+except for his horses and automobiles; she even suspected that he was
+gambling, and his poor wife lived without a thing to her back, and had
+to weep her requests every time she received a bill, little trifles of a
+thousand pesetas or two.
+
+The father was as generous to her as a lover. He felt like pouring at
+her feet all that he had piled up in long years of labor. She must live
+in happiness, since she loved her husband! Her worries made him smile
+scornfully. Money! Josephina's daughter sad because she needed things,
+when in his house there were so many dirty, insignificant papers which
+he had worked so hard to win and which he now looked at with
+indifference! He always went away from these visits amid hugs and a
+shower of kisses from that big girl who expressed her joy by shaking him
+disrespectfully, as if he were a child.
+
+"Papa, dear, how good you are! How I love you!"
+
+One night as he left his daughter's house with Cotoner, he said
+mysteriously:
+
+"Come in the morning, I will show it to you. It isn't finished but I
+want you to see it. Just you. No one can judge better."
+
+Then he added with the satisfaction of an artist:
+
+"Once I could paint only what I saw. Now I am different. It has cost me
+a good deal, but you shall judge."
+
+And in his voice there was the joy of difficulties overcome, the
+certainty that he had produced a great work.
+
+Cotoner came the next day, with the haste of curiosity, and entered the
+studio closed to others.
+
+"Look!" said the master with a proud gesture.
+
+His friend looked. Opposite the window was a canvas on an easel; a
+canvas for the most part gray, and on this, confused, interlaced lines
+revealing some hesitancy over the various contours of a body. At one end
+was a spot of color, to which the master pointed--a woman's head which
+stood out sharply on the rough background of the cloth.
+
+Cotoner stood in silent contemplation. Had the great artist really
+painted that? He did not see the master's hand. Although he was an
+unimportant painter, he had a good eye, and he saw in the canvas
+hesitancy, fear, awkwardness, the struggle with something unreal which
+was beyond his reach, which refused to enter the mold of form. He was
+struck by the lack of likeness, by the forced exaggeration of the
+strokes; the eyes unnaturally large, the tiny mouth, almost a point, the
+bright skin with its supernatural pallor. Only in the pupils of the eyes
+was there something remarkable--a glance that came from afar, an
+extraordinary light which seemed to pass through the canvas.
+
+"It has cost me a great deal. No work ever made me suffer so. This is
+only the head; the easiest part. The body will come later; a divine
+nude, such as has never been seen. And only you shall see it, only you!"
+
+The Bohemian no longer looked at the picture. He was gazing at the
+master, astonished at the work, disconcerted by its mystery.
+
+"You see, without a model. Without the real before me," continued the
+master. "_They_ were all the guide I had; but it is my best, my supreme
+work."
+
+_They_ were all the portraits of the dead woman, taken down from the
+walls and placed on easels or chairs in a close circle around the
+canvas.
+
+His friend could not contain his astonishment, he could not pretend any
+longer, overcome by surprise.
+
+"Oh, but it is---- But you have been trying to paint Josephina!"
+
+Renovales started back violently.
+
+"Josephina, yes. Who else should it be? Where are your eyes?"
+
+And his angry glance flashed at Cotoner.
+
+The latter looked at the head again. Yes, it was she, with a beauty that
+was not of this world,--uncanny, spiritualized, as if it belonged to a
+new humanity, free from coarse necessities, in which the last traces of
+animal descent have died out. He gazed at the numerous portraits of
+other times and recognized parts of them in the new work, but animated
+by a light which came from within and changed the value of the colors,
+giving to the face a strange unfamiliarity.
+
+"You recognize her at last!" said the master, anxiously following the
+impressions of his work in the eyes of his friend. "Is it she? Tell me,
+don't you think it is like her?"
+
+Cotoner lied compassionately. Yes, it was she, at last he saw her well
+enough. She, but more beautiful than in life. Josephina had never looked
+like that.
+
+Now it was Renovales who looked with surprise and pity. Poor Cotoner!
+Unhappy failure--pariah of art, who could not rise above the nameless
+crowd and whose only feeling was in his stomach! What did he know about
+such things? What was the use of asking his opinion?
+
+He had not recognized Josephina, and nevertheless this canvas was his
+best portrait, the most exact.
+
+Renovales bore her within him, he saw her merely by retiring into his
+thoughts. No one could know her better than he. The rest had forgotten
+her. That was the way he saw her and that was what she had been.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The Countess of Alberca succeeded in making her way, one afternoon, to
+the master's studio.
+
+The servant saw her arrive as usual in a cab, cross the garden, come up
+the steps, and enter the reception room with the hasty step of a
+resolute woman who goes straight ahead without hesitating. He tried to
+block her way respectfully, going from side to side, meeting her every
+time she started to one side to pass this obstacle. The master was
+working! The master was not receiving callers! It was a strict order; he
+could not make an exception! But she continued ahead with a frown, a
+flash of cold wrath in her eyes, an evident determination to strike down
+the servant, if it was necessary, and to pass over his body.
+
+"Come, my good man, get out of the way."
+
+And her haughty, irritated accent made the poor servant tremble and at a
+loss to stop this invasion of rustling skirts and strong perfumes. In
+one of her evolutions the fair lady ran into an Italian mosaic table, on
+the center of which was the old jar. Her glance fell instinctively to
+the bottom of the jar.
+
+It was only an instant, but enough for her woman's curiosity to
+recognize the blue envelopes with white borders, whose sealed ends stuck
+out, untouched, from the pile of cards. The last straw! Her paleness
+grew intense, almost greenish, and she started forward with such a rush
+that the servant could not stop her and was left behind her, dejected,
+confused, fearful of his master's wrath.
+
+Renovales, alarmed by the sharp click of heels on the hard floor, and
+the rustling of skirts, turned toward the door just as the countess made
+her entrance with a dramatic expression.
+
+"It's me."
+
+"You? You, dear?"
+
+Excitement, surprise, fear made the master stammer.
+
+"Sit down," he said coldly.
+
+She sat down on a couch and the artist remained standing in front of
+her.
+
+They looked at each other as if they did not recognize each other after
+this absence of weeks which weighed on their memories as if it were of
+years.
+
+Renovales looked at her coldly, without the least tremble of desire, as
+if it were an ordinary visitor whom he must get rid of as soon as
+possible. He was surprised at her greenish pallor, at her mouth, drawn
+with irritation, at her hard eyes which flashed yellow flames, at her
+nose which curved down to her upper lip. She was angry, but when her
+eyes fell on him, they lost their hardness.
+
+Her woman's instinct was calmed when she gazed at him. He, too, looked
+different in the carelessness of the seclusion; his hair tangled,
+revealing the preoccupation, the fixed, absorbing idea, which made him
+neglect the neatness of his person.
+
+Her jealousy vanished instantly, her cruel suspicion that she would
+surprise him in love with another woman, with the fickleness of an
+artist. She knew the external evidence of love, the necessity a man
+feels of making himself attractive, refining the care of his dress.
+
+She surveyed his neglect with satisfaction, noticing his dirty clothes,
+his long fingernails, stained with paint, all the details which revealed
+lack of tidiness, forgetfulness of his person. No doubt it was a passing
+artist's whim, a craze for work, but they did not reveal what she had
+suspected.
+
+In spite of this calming certainty, as Concha was ready to shed the
+tears which were all prepared, waiting impatiently on the edge of her
+eyelids, she raised her hands to her eyes, curling up on one end of the
+couch, with a tragic expression. She was very unhappy; she was suffering
+terribly. She had passed several horrible weeks. What was the matter?
+Why had he disappeared without a word of explanation, when she loved him
+more than ever, when she was ready to give up everything, to cause a
+perfect scandal, by coming to live with him, as his companion, his
+slave? And her letters, her poor letters, neglected, unopened, as if
+they were annoying requests for alms. She had spent the nights awake,
+putting her whole soul into their pages! And in her accent there was a
+tremble of literary pique, of bitterness, that all the pretty things,
+which she wrote down with a smile of satisfaction after long reflection,
+remained unknown. Men! Their selfishness and cruelty! How stupid women
+were to worship them!
+
+She continued to weep and Renovales looked at her as if she were another
+woman. She seemed ridiculous to him in that grief, which distorted her
+face, which made her ugly, destroying her smiling, doll-like
+impassibility.
+
+He tried to offer excuses, that he might not seem cruel by keeping
+silent, but they lacked warmth and the desire to carry conviction. He
+was working hard; it was time for him to return to his former life of
+creative activity. She forgot that he was an artist, a master of some
+reputation, who had his duty to the public. He was not like those young
+fops who could devote the whole day to her and pass their life at her
+feet, like enamored pages.
+
+"We must be serious, Concha," he added with pedantic coldness. "Life is
+not play. I must work and I am working. I haven't been out of here for
+I don't know how many days."
+
+She stood up angrily, took her hands from her eyes, looked at him,
+rebuking him. He lied; he had been out and it had never occurred to him
+to come to her house for a moment.
+
+"Just to say 'Good morning,' nothing more. So that I may see you for an
+instant, Mariano, long enough to be sure that you are the same, that you
+still love me. But you have gone out often; you have been seen. I have
+my detectives who tell me everything. You are too well known to pass
+unnoticed. You have been in the Museo del Prado mornings. You have been
+seen gazing at a picture of Goya's, a nude, for hours at a time, like an
+idiot. Your hobby is coming back again, Mariano! And it hasn't occurred
+to you to come and see me; you haven't answered my letters. You feel
+proud, it seems, content with being loved, and submit to being worshiped
+like an idol, certain that the more uncivil you are, the more you will
+be loved. Oh, these men! These artists!"
+
+She sobbed, but her voice no longer preserved the irritated tone of the
+first few moments. The certainty that she did not have to struggle with
+the influence of another woman softened her pride, leaving in her only
+the gentle complaint of a victim who is eager to sacrifice herself anew.
+
+"But sit down," she exclaimed amid her sobs, pointing to a place on the
+couch beside her. "Don't stand up. You look as if you wanted me to go
+away."
+
+The painter sat down timidly, taking care not to touch her, avoiding
+those hands which reached out to him, longing for a pretext to seize
+him. He saw her desire to weep on his shoulder, to forget everything,
+and to banish her last tears with a smile. That was what always
+happened, but Renovales, knowing the game, drew back roughly. That must
+not begin again; it could, not be repeated, even if he wanted to. He
+must tell her the truth at any cost, end it forever, throw off the
+burden from his shoulders.
+
+He spoke hoarsely, stammering, with his eyes on the floor, not daring to
+lift them for fear of meeting Concha's which he felt were fixed upon
+him.
+
+For several days he had been meaning to write to her. He had been afraid
+that he might not express his ideas clearly and so he had put off the
+letter until the next day. Now he was glad she had come; he rejoiced at
+the weakness of his valet, in letting her enter.
+
+They must talk like good comrades who examine the future together. It
+was time to put an end to their folly. They would be what Concha once
+desired, friends--good friends. She was beautiful; she still had the
+freshness of youth, but time leaves its mark, and he felt that he was
+getting old; he looked at life from a height, as we look at the water of
+a stream, without dipping into it.
+
+Concha listened to him in astonishment, refusing to understand his
+words. What did these scruples mean? After some digressions, the painter
+spoke remorsefully of his friend, the Count of Alberca, a man whom he
+respected for his very guilelessness. His conscience rose in protest at
+the simple admiration of the good man. This daring deceit in his own
+house, under his own roof, was infamous. He could not go on; they must
+purify themselves from the past by being good friends, must say good-by
+as lovers, without spite or antipathy, grateful to each other for the
+happy past, taking with them, like dead lovers, their pleasant memories.
+
+Concha's laugh, nervous, sarcastic, insolent, interrupted the artist.
+Her cruel spirit of fun was aroused at the thought that her husband was
+the pretext of this break. Her husband! And once more she began to laugh
+uproariously, revealing the count's insignificance, the absolute lack
+of respect which he inspired in his wife, or her habit of adjusting her
+life as her fancy dictated, with never a thought of what that man might
+say or think. Her husband did not exist for her; she never feared him;
+she had never thought that he might serve as an obstacle, and yet her
+lover spoke of him, presented _him_ as a justification for leaving her!
+
+"My husband!" she repeated amid the peals of her cruel laughter. "Poor
+thing! Leave him in peace; he has nothing to do with us. Don't lie;
+don't be a coward. Speak. You've something else on your mind. I don't
+know what it is; but I have a presentiment, I see it from here. If you
+loved another woman! If you loved another woman!"
+
+But she broke off this threatening exclamation. She needed only to look
+at him to be convinced that it was impossible. His body was not perfumed
+with love; everything about him revealed calm peace, without interests
+or desires. Perhaps it was a whim of his fancy, some unbalanced caprice
+which led him to repel her. And encouraged by this belief, she relaxed,
+forgetting her anger, speaking to him affectionately, caressing him with
+a fervor in which there was something at once of the mother and of the
+mistress.
+
+Renovales suddenly saw her beside him with her arms around his neck,
+burying her hands in his tangled hair.
+
+She was not proud; men worshiped her, but her heart, her body, all of
+her belonged to the master, the ungrateful brute, who returned so ill
+her affection that she was getting old with her trouble.
+
+Suddenly filled with tenderness, she kissed his forehead generously and
+purely. Poor boy! He was working so hard! The only thing the matter was
+that he was tired out, distracted with too much painting. He must leave
+his brushes alone, live, love her, be happy, rest his wrinkled forehead
+behind which, like a curtain, an invisible world passed and repassed in
+perpetual revolution.
+
+"Let me kiss your pretty forehead again, so that the hobgoblins within
+may be silent and sleep."
+
+And she kissed once more his _pretty_ forehead, delighting in caressing
+with her lips the furrows and prominences of its irregular surface,
+rough as volcanic ground.
+
+For a long time her wheedling voice, with an exaggerated childish lisp,
+sounded in the silence of the studio. She was jealous of painting, the
+cruel mistress, exacting and repugnant, who seemed to drive her poor
+baby mad. One of these days, master, the studio would catch on fire
+together with all its pictures. She tried to draw him to her, to make
+him sit on her lap, so that she might rock him like a child.
+
+"Look here, Mariano, dear. Laugh for your Concha. Laugh, you big stupid!
+Laugh, or I'll whip you."
+
+He laughed, but it was forced. He tried to resist her fondling, tired of
+those childish tricks which once were his delight. He remained
+indifferent to those hands, those lips, to the warmth of that body which
+rubbed against him without awakening the least desire. And he had loved
+that woman! For her he had committed the terrible, irreparable crime
+which would make him drag the chain of remorse forever! What surprises
+life has in store!
+
+The painter's coldness finally had its effect on the Alberca woman. She
+seemed to awaken from the dream, in which she was lulling herself. She
+drew back from her lover, and looked at him fixedly with imperious eyes,
+in which a spark of pride was once more beginning to flash.
+
+"Say that you love me! Say it at once! I need it!"
+
+But in vain did she show her authority; in vain she brought her eyes
+close to him, as if she wished to look within him. The artist smiled
+faintly, murmured evasive words, refused to comply with her demands.
+
+"Say it out loud, so that I can hear it. Say that you love me. Call me
+Phryne, as you used to when you worshiped me on your knees, kissing my
+body!"
+
+He said nothing. He hung his head in shame at the memory, so as not to
+see her.
+
+The countess stood up nervously. In her anger, she drew back to the
+middle of the studio, her hands clenched, her lips quivering, her eyes
+flashing. She wanted to destroy something, to fall on the floor in a
+convulsion. She hesitated whether to break an Arabic amphora close by,
+or to fall on that bowed head and scratch it with her nails. Wretch! She
+had loved him so dearly; she still cared for him so, feeling bound to
+him by both vanity and habit!
+
+"Say whether you love me," she cried. "Say it once and for all! Yes or
+no?"
+
+Still she obtained no answer. The silence was trying. Once more she
+believed there was another love, a woman who had come to occupy her
+place. But who was it? Where could he have found her? Her woman's
+instinct made her turn her head and glance into the next studio and
+beyond into the last, the real workshop of the master. Warned by a
+mysterious intuition, she started to run toward it. There! Perhaps
+there! The painter's steps sounded behind her. He had started from his
+dejection when he saw her fleeing; he followed her in a frenzy of fear.
+Concha foresaw that she was going to know the truth; a cruel truth with
+all the crudeness of a discovery in broad daylight. She stopped,
+scowling with a mental effort before that portrait which seemed to
+dominate the studio, occupying the best easel, in the most advantageous
+position, in spite of the solitary gray of its canvas.
+
+The master saw in Concha's face the same expression of doubt and
+surprise which he had seen in Cotoner's. Who was that? But the
+hesitation was shorter; her woman's pride sharpened her senses. She saw
+beyond that unrecognizable head the circle of older portraits which
+seemed to guard it.
+
+Ah! The immense surprise in her eyes; the cold astonishment in the
+glance she fixed on the painter as she surveyed him from head to foot!
+
+"Is it Josephina?"
+
+He bowed his head in mute assent. But his silence seemed to him
+cowardly; he felt that he must cry out in the presence of those
+canvases, what he had not dared to say outside. It was a longing to
+flatter the dead woman, to implore her forgiveness, by confessing his
+hopeless love.
+
+"Yes, it is Josephina."
+
+And he said it with spirit, going forward a step, looking at Concha as
+if she were an enemy, with a sort of hostility in his eyes which did not
+escape her notice.
+
+They did not say anything more. The countess could not speak. Her
+surprise passed the limits of the probable, the known.
+
+In love with his wife,--and after she was dead! Shut up like a hermit in
+order to paint her with a beauty which she had never had. Life brings
+surprises, but this surely had never been seen before.
+
+She felt as if she were falling, falling, driven by astonishment and, at
+the end of the fall, she found that she was changed, without a complaint
+or pang of grief. Everything about her seemed strange--the room, the
+man, the pictures. This whole affair went beyond her power of
+conception. Had she found a woman there, it would have made her weep and
+shriek with grief, roll on the floor, love the master still more with
+the stimulus of jealousy. But to find that her rival was a dead woman!
+And more than that--his wife! It seemed supremely ridiculous, she felt a
+mad desire to laugh. But she did not laugh. She recalled the unusual
+expression she had noticed on the master's face, when she entered the
+studio; she thought that now she saw in his eyes a spark of that same
+gleam.
+
+Suddenly she felt afraid; afraid of the man who looked at her in silence
+as if he did not know her and toward whom she felt the same strangeness.
+
+Still she had for him a glance of sympathy, of that tenderness which
+every woman feels in the presence of unhappiness, even if it afflicts a
+stranger. Poor Mariano! All was over between them; she took care not to
+speak intimately to him; she held out her gloved hand with the gesture
+of an unapproachable lady. For a long time they stood in this position,
+speaking only with their eyes.
+
+"Good-by, master; take care of yourself! Don't bother to come with me. I
+know the way. Go on with your work. Paint----"
+
+Her heels clicked nervously on the waxed floor as she left the room,
+which she was never to enter again. The swish of her skirts scattered
+their wake of perfumes in the studio for the last time.
+
+Renovales breathed more freely when he was left alone. He had ended
+forever the error of his life. The only thing in this visit that left a
+sting was the countess's hesitation before the portrait. She had
+recognized it sooner than Cotoner, but she too had hesitated. No one
+remembered Josephina; he alone kept her image.
+
+That same afternoon, before his old friend came, the master received
+another call. His daughter appeared in the studio. Renovates had
+divined that it was she before she entered, by the whirl of joy and
+overflowing life which seemed to precede her.
+
+She had come to see him; she had promised him a visit months ago. And
+her father smiled indulgently, recalling some of her complaints when he
+last visited her. Just to see him?
+
+Milita pretended to be absorbed in examining the studio which she had
+not entered for a long time.
+
+"Look!" she exclaimed. "Why, it's mamma!"
+
+She looked at the picture with astonishment, but the master seemed
+pleased at the readiness with which she had recognized her. At last, his
+daughter! The instinct of blood! The poor master did not see the hasty
+glance at the other portraits which had guided the girl in her
+induction.
+
+"Do you like it? Is it she?" he asked as anxiously as a novice.
+
+Milita answered rather vaguely. Yes, it was good; perhaps a little more
+beautiful than she was. She never knew her like that.
+
+"That is true," said the master, "You never saw her in her good days.
+But she was like that before you were born. Your poor mother was very
+beautiful."
+
+But his daughter did not manifest any great enthusiasm over the picture.
+It seemed strange to her. Why was the head at one end of the canvas?
+What was he going to add? What did those lines mean? The master tried to
+explain, almost blushing, afraid to tell his intention to his daughter,
+suddenly overcome by paternal modesty. He was not sure as yet what he
+would do; he had to decide on a dress to suit her. And in a sudden
+access of tenderness, his eyes grew moist and he kissed his daughter.
+
+"Do you remember her well, Milita? She was very good, wasn't she?"
+
+His daughter felt infected by her father's sadness, but only for a
+moment. Her strength, health and joy of life soon threw off these sad
+impressions. Yes, very good. She often thought about her. Perhaps she
+spoke the truth; but these memories were not deep nor painful. Death
+seemed to her a thing without meaning, a remote incident without much
+terror which did not disturb the serene calm of her physical perfection.
+
+"Poor mamma," she added in a forced tone. "It was a relief for her to
+go. Always sick, always sad! With such a life it is better to die!"
+
+In her words there was a trace of bitterness, the memory of her youth,
+spent with that touchy invalid, in an atmosphere made the more
+unpleasant by the hostile chill with which her parents treated each
+other. Besides, her expression was icy. We all must die. The weak must
+go first and leave their place to the strong. It was the unconscious,
+cruel selfishness of health. Renovales suddenly saw his daughter's soul
+through this rent of frankness. The dead woman had known them both. The
+daughter was his, wholly his. He, too, possessed that selfishness in his
+strength which had made him crush weakness and delicacy placed under his
+protection. Poor Josephina had only him left, repentant and adoring. For
+the other people, she had not passed through the world; not even his
+daughter felt any lasting sorrow at her death.
+
+Milita turned her back to the portrait. She forgot her mother and her
+father's work. An artist's hobby! She had come for something else.
+
+She sat down beside him, almost in the same way that another woman had
+sat down, a few hours before. She coaxed him with her rich voice, which
+took on a sort of cat-like purring. Papa,--papa, dear,--she was very
+unhappy. She came to see him, to tell him her troubles.
+
+"Yes, money," said the master, somewhat annoyed at the indifference with
+which she had spoken of her mother.
+
+"Money, papa, you've said it; I told you the other day. But that isn't
+all. Rafael--my husband--I can't stand this sort of life."
+
+And she related all the petty trials of her existence. In order not to
+feel that she was prematurely a widow, she had to go with her husband in
+his automobile and show an interest in his trips which once had amused
+her but now were growing unbearable.
+
+"It's the life of a section-hand, papa, always swallowing dust and
+counting kilometers. When I love Madrid so much! When I can't live out
+of it!"
+
+She had sat down on her father's knees, she talked to him, looking into
+his eyes, smoothing his hair, pulling his mustache, like a mischievous
+child,--almost as the other had.
+
+"Besides, he's stingy; if he had his way, I'd look like a frump. He
+thinks everything is too much. Papa, help me out of this difficulty,
+it's only two thousand pesetas. With that I can get on my feet and then
+I won't bother you with any more loans. Come, that's a dear papa. I need
+them right away, because I waited till the last minute, so as not to
+inconvenience you."
+
+Renovales moved about uneasily under the weight of his daughter, a
+strapping girl who fell on him like a child. Her filial confidences
+annoyed him. Her perfume made him think of that other perfume, which
+disturbed his nights, spreading through the solitude of the rooms. She
+seemed to have inherited her mother's flesh.
+
+He pushed her away roughly, and she took this movement for a refusal.
+Her face grew sad, tears came to her eyes, and her father repented his
+brusqueness. He was surprised at her constant requests for money. What
+did she want it for? He recalled the wedding-presents, that princely
+abundance of clothes and jewels which had been on exhibition in this
+very room. What did she need? But Milita looked at her father in
+astonishment. More than a year had gone by since then. It was clear
+enough that her father was ignorant in such matters. Was she going to
+wear the same gowns, the same hats, the same ornaments for an endless
+length of time, more than twelve months? Horrible! That was too
+commonplace. And overcome at the thought of such a monstrosity, she
+began to shed her tender tears to the great disturbance of the master.
+
+"There, there, Milita, there's no use in crying. What do you want?
+Money? I'll send you all you need to-morrow. I haven't much at the
+house. I shall have to get it at the bank--operations you don't
+understand."
+
+But Milita, encouraged by her victory, insisted on her request with
+desperate obstinacy. He was deceiving her; he would not remember it the
+next day; she knew her father. Besides, she needed the money at
+once,--her honor was at stake (she declared it seriously) if her friends
+discovered that she was in debt.
+
+"This very minute, papa. Don't be horrid. Don't amuse yourself by making
+me worry. You must have money, lots of it, perhaps you have it on you.
+Let's see, you naughty papa, let me search your pockets, let me look at
+your wallet. Don't say no; you have it with you. You have it with you!"
+
+She plunged her hands in her father's breast, unbuttoning his working
+jacket, tickling him to get at the inside pocket. Renovales resisted
+feebly. "You foolish girl. You're wasting your time. Where do you think
+the wallet is? I never carry it in this suit."
+
+"It's here, you fibber," his daughter cried merrily, persisting in her
+search. "I feel it! I have it! Look at it!"
+
+She was right. The painter had forgotten that he had picked it up that
+morning to pay a bill and then had put it absent-mindedly in the pocket
+of his serge coat.
+
+Milita opened it with a greediness that hurt her father. Oh, those
+woman's hands, trembling in the search for money! He grew calmer when he
+thought of the fortune he had amassed, of the different colored papers
+which he kept in his desk. All would be his daughter's and perhaps this
+would save her from the danger toward which her longing to live amid the
+vanities and tinsel of feminine slavery was leading her.
+
+In an instant she had her hands on a number of bills of different
+denominations, forming a roll which she squeezed tight between her
+fingers.
+
+Renovales protested.
+
+"Let me have it, Milita, don't be childish. You're leaving me without a
+cent. I'll send it to you to-morrow; give it up now. It's robbery."
+
+She avoided him; she had stood up; she kept at a distance, raising her
+hand above her hat to save her booty. She laughed boisterously at her
+trick. She did not mean to give him back a single one! She did not know
+how many there were, she would count them at home, she would be out of
+difficulty for the nonce, and the next day she would ask him for what
+was lacking.
+
+The master finally began to laugh, finding her merriment contagious. He
+chased Milita without trying to catch her; he threatened her with mock
+severity, called her a robber, shouting "help," and so they ran from one
+studio to another. Before she disappeared, Milita stopped on the last
+doorsill, raising her gloved finger authoritatively:
+
+"To-morrow, the rest. You mustn't forget. Really, papa, this is very
+important. Good-by; I shall expect you to-morrow."
+
+And she disappeared, leaving in her father some of the merriment with
+which they had chased each other.
+
+The twilight was gloomy. Renovales sat in front of his wife's portrait,
+gazing at that extravagantly beautiful head which seemed to him the most
+faithful of his portraits. His thoughts were lost in the shadow which
+rose from the corners and enveloped the canvases. Only on the windows
+trembled a pale, hazy light, cut across by the black lines of the
+branches outside.
+
+Alone--alone forever. He had the affection of that big girl who had just
+gone away, merry, indifferent to everything which did not flatter her
+youthful vanity, her healthy beauty. He had the devotion of his friend
+Cotoner, who, like an old dog, could not live without seeing him, but
+was incapable of wholly devoting his life to him, and shared it between
+him and other friends, jealous of his Bohemian freedom.
+
+And that was all. Very little.
+
+On the verge of old age, he gazed at a cruel, reddish light which seemed
+to irritate his eyes; the solitary, monotonous road which awaited
+him--and at the end, death! No one was ignorant of that; it was the only
+certainty, and still he had spent the greater part of his life without
+thinking of it, without seeing it.
+
+It was like one of those epidemics in distant lands which destroy
+millions of lives. People talk of it as of a definite fact, but without
+a start of horror, or a tremble of fear. "It is too far away; it will
+take it a long time to reach us."
+
+He had often named Death, but with his lips; his thoughts had not
+grasped the meaning of the word, feeling that he was alive, bound to
+life by his dreams and desires.
+
+Death stood at the end of the road; no one could avoid meeting it, but
+all are long in seeing it. Ambition, desire, love, the cruel animal
+needs distracted man in his course toward it; they were like the woods,
+valleys, blue sky and winding crystal streams which diverted the
+traveler, hiding the boundary of the landscape, the fatal goal, the
+black bottomless gorge to which all roads lead.
+
+He was on the last days' march. The path of his life was growing
+desolate and gloomy; the vegetation was dwindling; the great groves
+diminished into sparse, miserable lichens. From the murky abyss came an
+icy breath; he saw it in the distance, he walked without escape toward
+its gorge. The fields of dreams with their sunlit heights which once
+bounded the horizon, were left behind and it was impossible to return.
+In this path no one retraced his steps.
+
+He had wasted half his life, struggling for wealth and fame, hoping
+sometimes to receive their revenues in the pleasures of love. Die! Who
+thought of that? Then it was a remote, unmeaning threat. He believed
+that he was provided with a mission by Providence. Death would take no
+liberties with him, would not come till his work was finished. He still
+had many things to do. Well, all was done now; human desires did not
+exist for him. He had everything. No longer did fanciful towers rise
+before his steps, for him to assault. On the horizon, free from
+obstacles, appeared the great forgotten,--Death.
+
+He did not want to see it. There was still a long journey on that road
+which might grow longer and longer, according to the strength of the
+traveler, and his legs were still strong.
+
+But, ah, to walk, walk, year after year, with his gaze fixed on that
+murky abyss, contemplating it always at the edge of the horizon, unable
+to escape for an instant the certainty that it was there, was a
+superhuman torture which would force him to hurry his steps, to run in
+order to reach the end as soon as possible. Oh, for deceitful clouds
+which might veil the horizon, concealing the reality which embitters our
+bread, which casts its shadows over our souls and makes us curse the
+futility of our birth! Oh, for lying, pleasant illusions to make a
+paradise rise from the desert shadows of the last journey! Oh, for
+dreams!
+
+And in his mind the poor master enlarged the last fancy of his desire;
+he connected with the beloved likeness of his dead wife all the flights
+of his imagination, longing to infuse into it new life with a part of
+his own. He piled up by handfuls the clay of the past, the mass of
+memory, to make it greater that it might occupy the whole way, shut off
+the horizon like a huge hill, hide till the last moment the murky abyss
+which ended the journey.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Renovales' behavior was a source of surprise and even scandal for all
+his friends.
+
+The Countess of Alberca took especial care to let every one know that
+her only relation with the painter was a friendship which grew
+constantly colder and more formal.
+
+"He's crazy," she said. "He's finished. There's nothing left of him but
+a memory of what he once was."
+
+Cotoner in his unswerving friendship was indignant at hearing such
+comment on the famous master.
+
+"He isn't drinking. All that people say about him is a lie; the usual
+legend about a celebrated man."
+
+He had his own ideas about Mariano; he knew his longing for a stirring
+life, his desire to imitate the habits of youth in the prime of life,
+with a thirst for all the mysteries which he fancied were hidden in this
+evil life, of which he had heard without ever daring till then to join
+in them.
+
+Cotoner accepted the master's new habits indulgently. Poor fellow!
+
+"You are putting into action the pictures of 'The Rake's Progress,'" he
+said to his friend. "You're going the way of all virtuous men when they
+cease to be so, on the verge of old age. You are making a fool of
+yourself, Mariano."
+
+But his loyalty led him to acquiesce in the new life of the master. At
+last he had given in to his requests and had come to live with him. With
+his few pieces of luggage he occupied a room in the house and cared for
+Renovales with almost paternal solicitude. The Bohemian showed great
+sympathy for him. It was the same old story: "He who does not do it at
+the beginning does it at the end," and Renovales, after a life of hard
+work, was rushing into a life of dissipation with the blindness of a
+youth, admiring vulgar pleasures, clothing them with the most fanciful
+seductions.
+
+Cotoner frequently harassed him with complaints. What had he brought him
+to live at his house for? He deserted him for days at a time; he wanted
+to go out alone; he left him at home like a trusty steward. The old
+Bohemian posted himself minutely on his life. Often the students in the
+Art School, gathered at nightfall beside the entrance to the Academy,
+saw him going down the Calle de Alcalá, muffled in his cloak with an
+affected air of mystery that attracted attention.
+
+"There goes Renovales. That one, the one in the cloak."
+
+And they followed him out of curiosity--in his comings and goings
+through the broad street where he circled about like a silent dove as if
+he were waiting for something. Sometimes, no doubt tired of these
+evolutions, he went into a café and the curious admirers followed him,
+pressing their faces against the window-panes. They saw him drop into a
+chair, looking vaguely at the glass before him; always the same thing:
+brandy. Suddenly he would drink it at one gulp, pay the waiter and go
+out, with the haste of one who has swallowed a drug. And once more he
+would begin his explorations, peering with greedy eyes at all the women
+who passed alone, turning around to follow the course of run-down heels,
+the flutter of dark and mud-splashed skirts. At last he would start with
+sudden determination, he would disappear almost on the heel of some
+woman always of the same appearance. The boys knew the great artist's
+preference: little, weak, sickly women, graceful as faded flowers, with
+large eyes, dull and sorrowful.
+
+A story of strange mental aberration was forming about him. His enemies
+repeated it in the studios; the throng which cannot imagine that
+celebrated men lead the same life as other people, and like to think
+that they are capricious, tormented by extraordinary habits, began to
+talk with delight about the hobby of the painter Renovales.
+
+In all the houses of prostitution, from the middle class apartments,
+scattered in the most respectable streets, to the damp, ill-smelling
+dens which cast out their wares at night on the Calle de Peligros,
+circulated the story of a certain gentleman, provoking shouts of
+laughter. He always came muffled up mysteriously, following hastily the
+rustle of some poor starched skirts which preceded him. He entered the
+dark doorway with a sort of terror, climbed the winding staircase which
+seemed to smell of the residues of life, hastened the disrobing with
+eager hands, as if he had no time to waste, as if he was afraid of dying
+before he realized his desire, and all at once the poor women who looked
+askance at his feverish silence and the savage hunger which shone in his
+eyes, were tempted to laugh, seeing him drop dejectedly into a chair in
+silence, unmindful of the brutal words which they in their astonishment
+hurled at him; without paying any attention to their gestures and
+invitations, not coming out of his stupor till the woman, cold and
+somewhat offended, started to put on her clothes. "One moment more."
+This scene almost always ended with an expression of disgust, of bitter
+disappointment. Sometimes the poor puppets of flesh thought they saw in
+his eyes a sorrowful expression, as if he were going to weep. Then he
+fled precipitously, hidden under his cloak in sudden shame, with the
+firm determination not to return, to resist that demon of hungry
+curiosity which dwelt within him and could not see a woman's form in the
+street, without feeling a violent desire to disrobe it.
+
+These stories came to Cotoner's ears. Mariano! Mariano! He did not dare
+to rebuke him openly for these shameful nocturnal adventures; he was
+afraid of a violent explosion of anger on the part of the master. He
+must direct him prudently. But what most aroused his old friend's
+censure was the people with whom the artist associated.
+
+This false rejuvenation made him seek the company of the younger men and
+Cotoner cursed roundly when at the close of the theater he found him in
+a café, surrounded by his new comrades, all of whom might be his sons.
+Most of them were painters, novices, some with considerable talent,
+others whose only merit was their evil tongue, all of them proud of
+their friendship with the famous man, delighting like pigmies in
+treating him as an equal, jesting over his weaknesses. Great Heavens!
+Some of the bolder even went so far as to call him by his first name,
+treating him like a glorious failure, presuming to make comparisons
+between his paintings and what they would do when they could. "Mariano,
+art moves in different paths, now."
+
+"Aren't you ashamed of yourself!" Cotoner would exclaim. "You look like
+a schoolmaster surrounded by children. You ought to be spanked. A man
+like you tolerating the insolence of those shabby fellows!"
+
+Renovales' good nature was unshaken. They were very interesting; they
+amused him; he found in them the joy of youth. They went together to the
+theaters and music halls, they knew women; they knew where the good
+models were; with them he could enter many places where he would not
+venture to go alone. His years and ugliness passed unnoticed amid that
+youthful merry crowd.
+
+"They are of service to me," the poor man said with a sly wink. "I am
+amused and they tell me lots of things. Besides, this isn't Rome; there
+are hardly any models; it is very difficult to find them and these boys
+are my guides."
+
+And he went on to speak of his great artistic plans, of that picture of
+Phryne, with her divine nakedness, which had once more risen in his
+mind, of the beloved portrait which was still in the same condition as
+his brush had left it when he finished the head.
+
+He was not working. His old energy, which had made painting a necessary
+element in his life, now found vent in words, in the desire to see
+everything, to know "new phases of life."
+
+Soldevilla, his favorite pupil, found himself a target for the master's
+questions when he appeared at rare intervals in the studio.
+
+"You must know good women, Soldevilla: You have been around a great deal
+in spite of that angel face of yours. You must take me with you. You
+must introduce me."
+
+"Master!" the youth would exclaim in surprise, "it isn't yet six months
+since I was married! I never go out at night! How you joke!"
+
+Renovates answered with a scornful glance. A fine life! No youth, no
+joy! He spent all his money on variegated waistcoats and high collars.
+What a perfect ant! He had married a rich woman, since he couldn't catch
+the master's daughter. Besides, he was an ungrateful scamp. Now he was
+joining the master's enemies, convinced that he could get nothing more
+out of him. He scorned him. It was too bad that his protection had
+caused him so much inconvenience! He was no artist.
+
+And the master went back with new affection to his companions, those
+merry youths, slandering and disrespectful as they were. He recognized
+talent in them all.
+
+The gossip about his extraordinary life reached even his daughter, with
+the rapid spread which anything prejudicial to a famous man acquires.
+
+Milita scowled, trying to restrain the laughter which the strangeness of
+this change aroused. Her father becoming a rake!
+
+"Papa! Papa!" she exclaimed in a comic tone of reproach.
+
+And papa made excuses like a naughty, hypocritical little boy,
+increasing by his perturbation his daughter's desire to laugh.
+
+López de Sosa seemed inclined to be indulgent toward his father-in-law.
+Poor old gentleman! All his life working, with a sick wife, who was very
+good and kind, to be sure, but who had embittered his life! She did well
+to die, and the artist did quite as well in making up for the time he
+had lost.
+
+With the instinctive freemasonry of all those who lead an easy, merry
+life, the sport defended his father-in-law, supported him, found him
+more attractive, more congenial, as a result of his new habits. A man
+must not always stay shut up in his studio with the irritated air of a
+prophet, talking about things which nobody would understand.
+
+They met each other in the evening during the last acts at the theaters
+and music halls, when the songs and dances were accompanied by the
+audience with a storm of cries and stamping. They greeted each other,
+the father inquired for Milita, they smiled with the sympathy of two
+good fellows and each went back to his group; the son-in-law to his
+club-mates in a box, still wearing the dress suits of the respectable
+gatherings from which they came--the painter to the orchestra seats
+with the long-haired young fellows who were his escort.
+
+Renovales was gratified to see López de Sosa greeting the most
+fashionable, highest-priced _cocottes_ and smiling to comic-opera stars
+with the familiarity of an old friend.
+
+That boy had excellent connections, and he regarded this as an indirect
+honor to his position as a father.
+
+Cotoner frequently found himself dragged out of his orbit of serious,
+substantial dinners and evening-parties, which he continued to frequent
+in order not to lose his friendships which were his only source of
+income.
+
+"You are coming with me to-night," the master would say mysteriously.
+"We will dine wherever you like, and afterwards I will show you
+something."
+
+And he took him to the theater where he sat restless and impatient until
+the chorus came on the stage. Then he would nudge Cotoner, who was sunk
+in his seat, with his eyes wide open, but asleep inside, in the sweet
+pleasure of good digestion.
+
+"Listen, look! the third from the right, the little girl--the one in the
+yellow shawl!"
+
+"I see her. What about her?" said his friend in a sour voice.
+
+"Look at her closely. Who does she look like? Who does she remind you
+of?"
+
+Cotoner answered with a grunt of indifference. She probably looked like
+her mother. What did he care about such resemblances. But his
+astonishment aroused him from his quiet when he heard Renovales say he
+thought her a rare likeness of his wife, and was indignant at him
+because he did not recognize it.
+
+"Why, Mariano, where are your eyes?" he exclaimed with no less sourness.
+"What resemblance is there between that scraggly girl with her starved
+face and your poor, dead wife. If you see a sorry-looking bean pole you
+will give it a name, Josephina,--and there's nothing more to say."
+
+Although Renovales was at first irritated at his friend's blindness, he
+was finally convinced. He had probably deceived himself, as long as
+Cotoner did not find the likeness. He must remember the dead woman
+better than he himself; love did not disturb _his_ memory.
+
+But a few days later he would once more besiege Cotoner with a
+mysterious air. "I have something to show you." And leaving the company
+of the merry lads who annoyed his old friend, he would take him to a
+music hall and point out another scandalous woman who was kicking a
+fling or doing a _danse du ventre_, and revealed her anemic emaciation
+under a mask of rouge.
+
+"How about this one?" the master would implore, almost in terror as if
+he doubted his own eyes. "Don't you think she looks something like her?
+Doesn't she remind you of her?"
+
+His friend broke out angrily:
+
+"You're crazy. What likeness is there between that poor little woman, so
+good, so sweet and so refined, and this low creature?"
+
+Renovales, after several failures which made him doubt the accuracy of
+his memory, did not dare to consult his friend. As soon as he tried to
+take him to a new show, Cotoner would draw back.
+
+"Another discovery? Come, Mariano, get these ideas out of your head. If
+people found out about it, they would think that you were crazy."
+
+But defying his wrath, the master insisted one evening with great
+obstinacy that he must go with him to see the "Bella Fregolina," a
+Spanish girl, who was singing at a little theater in the low quarter,
+and whose name was displayed in letters a meter high in the shop windows
+of Madrid. He had spent more than two weeks watching her every evening.
+
+"I must have you see her, Pepe. Just for a minute. I beg you. I am sure
+that this time you won't say that I am mistaken."
+
+Cotoner gave in, persuaded by the imploring tone of his friend. They
+waited for the appearance of the "Bella Fregolina" for a long time,
+watching dances and listening to songs accompanied by the howls of the
+audience. The wonder was reserved till the last. At last, with a sort of
+solemnity, amid a murmur of expectation, the orchestra began to play a
+piece well known to all the admirers of the "star," a ray of rosy light
+crossed the little stage and the "Bella" entered.
+
+She was a slight little girl, so thin that she was almost emaciated. Her
+face, of a sweet melancholy beauty, was the most striking thing about
+her. Beneath her black dress, covered with silver threads, which spread
+out like a broad bell, you could see her slender legs, so thin that the
+flesh seemed hardly to cover the bones. Above the lace of her gown her
+skin, painted white, marked the slight curve of her breasts and the
+prominent collar bones. The first thing you saw about her were her eyes,
+large, clear, and girlish, but the eyes of a depraved girl, in which a
+licentious expression flickered, without, however, hurting their pure
+surface. She moved like an overgrown school-girl, arms akimbo, bashful
+and blushing and in this position she sang in a thin, high voice,
+obscene verses which contrasted strangely with her apparent timidity.
+This was her charm and the audience received her atrocious words with
+roars of delight, contenting themselves with this, without demanding
+that she dance, respecting her hieratic stiffness.
+
+When the painter saw her appear he nudged his friend.
+
+He did not dare to speak, waiting for his opinion anxiously. He
+followed his inspection out of the corner of his eye.
+
+His friend was merciful.
+
+"Yes, she is something like her. Her eyes,--figure,--expression; she
+reminds me of her. She is very much, like her. But the monkey face she
+is making now! The words! No, that destroys all likeness."
+
+And as if he were angry that that little girl without any voice and
+without any sense of shame, should be compared to the sweet Josephina,
+he commented with sarcastic admiration on all the cynical expressions
+with which she ended her couplets.
+
+"Very pretty! Very refined!"
+
+But Renovales, deaf to these ironical remarks, absorbed in the
+contemplation of "Fregolina," kept on poking him and whispering:
+
+"It's she, isn't it? Just exactly; the same body. And besides, the girl
+has some talent; she's funny."
+
+Cotoner nodded ironically: "Yes, very." And when he found that Mariano
+wanted to stay for the next act and did not move from his seat, he
+though of leaving him. Finally he stayed, stretching out in his seat
+with the determination to have a nap, lulled by the music and the cries
+of the audience.
+
+An impatient hand aroused him from his comfortable doze. "Pepe, Pepe."
+He shook his head and opened his eyes ill-naturedly. "What's the
+matter?" In Renovales' face he saw a honeyed, treacherous smile, some
+folly that he wanted to propose in the most pleasing manner.
+
+"I thought we might go behind the scenes for a minute: we could see her
+at close range."
+
+His friend answered him indignantly. Mariano thought he was a young
+buck; he forgot how he looked. That woman would laugh at them, she
+would assume the air of the Chaste Susanna, besieged by the two old men.
+
+Renovales was silent, but in a little while he once more aroused his
+friend from his nap.
+
+"You might go in alone, Pepe. You know more about these things than I
+do. You are more daring. You might tell her that I want to paint her
+portrait. Think, a portrait with my signature!"
+
+Cotoner started to laugh, in sheer admiration of the princely simplicity
+with which the master gave him the commission.
+
+"Thank you, sir; I am highly honored by such a favor, but I am not
+going. You confounded fool. Do you suppose that girl knows who Renovales
+is or has ever even heard of his name?"
+
+The master expressed his astonishment with childlike simplicity.
+
+"Man alive. I believe that the name Renovales--that what the papers have
+said--that my portraits---- Be frank, say that you don't want to."
+
+And he was silent, offended at his companion's refusal and his doubt
+that his fame had reached this corner. Friends sometimes abuse us with
+unexpected scorn and great injustice.
+
+At the end of the show the master felt that he must do something, not go
+away without sending the "Bella Fregolina" some evidence of his
+presence. He bought an elaborate basket of flowers from a flower vendor
+who was starting home, discouraged at the poor business. She should
+deliver it immediately to Señorita--"Fregolina."
+
+"Yes, to Pepita," said the woman with a knowing air, as if she were one
+of her friends.
+
+"And tell her it is from Señor Renovales--from Renovales, the painter."
+
+The woman nodded, repeating the name. "Very well, Renovales," just as
+she would have said any other name. And without the least emotion she
+took the five dollars which the painter gave her.
+
+"Five dollars! You idiot," muttered his friend, losing all respect for
+him.
+
+Good Cotoner refused to go with him after that. In vain Renovales talked
+to him enthusiastically every night about that girl, deeply impressed by
+her different impersonations. Now she appeared in a pale pink dress,
+almost like some clothes put away in the closets of his house; now she
+entered in a hat trimmed with flowers and cherries, much larger, but
+still something like a certain straw hat which he could find amid the
+confusion of Josephina's old finery. Oh, how it reminded him of her!
+Every night he was struck with some renewed memory.
+
+Lacking Cotoner's assistance, he went to see the "Bella" with some of
+the young fellows of his disrespectful court. These boys spoke of the
+"star" with respectful scorn, as the fox in the fable gazed at the
+distant grapes, consoling himself at the thought of their sourness. They
+praised her beauty, seen from a distance; according to them she was
+"lily-like"; she had the holy beauty of sin. She was out of their reach;
+she wore costly jewels and according to all reports had influential
+friends, all those young gentlemen in dress clothes who occupied the
+boxes during the last act, and waited for her at the stage door to take
+her to dinner.
+
+Renovales was gnawed with impatience, unable to find a way to meet her.
+Every night he sent his little baskets of flowers, or huge bouquets. The
+"star" must be informed whence these gifts came, for she looked around
+the audience for the ugly elderly gentleman, deigning to grant him a
+smile.
+
+One night the master saw López de Sosa speak to the singer. Perhaps his
+son-in-law was acquainted with her. And boldly as a lover, he waited for
+him when he came out to implore his help.
+
+He wanted to paint her; she was a magnificent model for a certain work
+he had in mind. He said it blushingly, stammering, but López laughed at
+his timidity and seemed disposed to protect him.
+
+"Oh, Pepita? A wonderful woman, in spite of the fact that she is on the
+decline. With all her school-girl face, if you could only see her at a
+party! She drinks like a fish. She's a terror!"
+
+But afterwards, with a serious expression, he explained the
+difficulties. She "belonged" to one of his friends, a lad from the
+provinces who, eager to win notoriety, was losing one-half his fortune
+gambling at the Casino and was calmly letting that girl devour the other
+half,--she gave him some reputation. He would speak to her; they were
+old friends; nothing wrong--eh, father? It would not be hard to persuade
+her. This Pepita had a predilection for anything that was unusual; she
+was rather--romantic. He would explain to her who the great artist was,
+enhancing the honor of acting as his model.
+
+"Don't stint on the money," said the master anxiously. "All that she
+wants. Don't be afraid to be generous."
+
+One morning Renovales called Cotoner to talk to him with wild
+expressions of joy.
+
+"She's going to come! She's going to come this very afternoon!"
+
+The old painter looked surprised.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The 'Bella Fregolina.' Pepita. My son-in-law tells me he has persuaded
+her. She will come this afternoon at three. He is coming with her
+himself."
+
+Then he cast a worried glance at his workshop. For some time it had been
+deserted; it must be set in order.
+
+And the servant on one side and the two artists on the other, began to
+tidy up the room hastily.
+
+The portraits of Josephina and the canvas with nothing but her head were
+piled up in a corner by the master's feverish hands. What was the use of
+those phantoms when the real thing was going to appear. In their place
+he put a large white canvas, gazing at its untouched surface with
+hopeful eyes. What things he was going to do that afternoon! What a
+power for work he felt!
+
+When the two artists were left alone, Renovales seemed restless,
+dissatisfied, constantly suspecting that something had been overlooked
+for this visit, toward which he looked with chills of anxiety. Flowers;
+they must get some flowers, fill all the old vases in the studio, create
+an atmosphere of delicate perfume.
+
+And Cotoner ran through the garden with the servant, plundered the
+greenhouse and came in with an armful of flowers, obedient and
+submissive as a faithful friend, but with a sarcastic reproach in his
+eyes. All that for the "Bella Fregolina"! The master was cracked; he was
+in his second childhood! If only this visit would cure him of his mania,
+which was almost madness!
+
+Afterwards the master had further orders. He must provide on one of the
+tables in the studio sweets, champagne, anything good he could find.
+Cotoner spoke of sending for the valet, complaining of the tasks which
+were imposed on him as a result of the visit of this girl of the
+guileless smile and the vile songs, who stood with arms akimbo.
+
+"No, Pepe," the master implored. "Listen--I don't want the valet to
+know. He talks afterward; my daughter probes him with questions."
+
+Cotoner went away with a resigned expression and when he returned an
+hour later, he found Renovales in the model's room arranging some
+clothes.
+
+The old painter lined up his packages on the table. He put the
+confectionery in antique plates and took the bottles out of their
+wrappers.
+
+"You are served, sir," he said with ironical respect. "Do you wish
+anything else, sir? The whole family is in a state of revolution over
+this noble lady; your son-in-law is bringing her; I am acting as your
+valet; all you need now is to send for your daughter to help her
+undress."
+
+"Thanks, Pepe, thanks ever so much," said the master with naive
+gratitude, apparently undisturbed by his jests.
+
+At luncheon time Cotoner saw him come into the dining-room with his hair
+carefully combed, his mustache curled, wearing his best suit with a rose
+in the buttonhole. The Bohemian laughed boisterously. The last straw! He
+was crazy; they would make sport of him!
+
+The master scarcely touched the meal. Afterwards he walked up and down
+alone in the studio. How slowly the time went! At each turn through the
+three studios he looked at the hands of an old clock of Saxon china,
+which stood on a table of colored marble, with its back reflected in a
+tall, Venetian mirror.
+
+It was already three. The master wondered if she was not going to come.
+Quarter past three,--half-past three. No, she was not coming; it was
+past the time. Those women who live amid obligations and demands,
+without a minute to themselves!
+
+Suddenly he heard steps and Cotoner entered.
+
+"She is here; here she comes. Good luck, master. Have a good time! I
+guess you have imposed on me long enough and will not expect me to
+stay."
+
+He went out waving him an ironical farewell and a little later
+Renovales heard López de Sosa's voice, approaching slowly, explaining to
+his companion the pictures and furniture which attracted her attention.
+
+They entered. The "Bella Fregolina" looked astonished; she seemed
+intimidated by the majestic silence of the studio. What a big, princely
+house, so different from all those she had seen! That ancient, solid,
+historic luxury with its rare furniture filled her with fear! She looked
+at Renovales with great respect. He seemed to her more distinguished
+than that other man whom she had seen indistinctly in the orchestra of
+her little theater. He was awe-inspiring, as if he were a great
+personage, different from all the men with whom she had had to do. To
+her fear was added a sort of admiration. How much money that old boy
+must have, living in such style!
+
+Renovales, too, was deeply moved when he saw her so close at hand.
+
+At first he hesitated. Was she really like the other? The paint on her
+face disconcerted him--the layer of rouge with black lines about the
+eyes--visible through the veil. The _other_ did not paint. But when he
+looked at her eyes, the striking resemblance rose again, and starting
+from them he gradually restored the beloved face under the layers of
+pomade.
+
+The "star" examined the canvases which covered the walls. How pretty!
+And did this gentleman do all that? She wanted to see herself like that,
+proud and beautiful in a canvas. Did he truly want to paint her? And she
+drew herself up vainly, delighted that people thought she was beautiful,
+that she would enjoy the emotion until then unknown of seeing her image
+reproduced by a great artist.
+
+López de Sosa excused himself to his father-in-law. She was to blame for
+their being late. You could never get a woman like that to hurry. She
+went to bed at daybreak; he had found her in bed.
+
+Then he said good-by, understanding the embarrassment his presence might
+cause. Pepita was a good girl, she was dazzled by his works and the
+appearance of the house. The master could do what he wanted with her.
+
+"Well, little girl, you stay here. The gentleman is my father; I told
+you already. Be sure and be a good girl."
+
+And he went out, followed by the forced laugh of them both, who greeted
+this recommendation with uneasy merriment.
+
+A long and painful silence followed. The master did not know what to
+say. Timidity and emotion weighed on his will. She seemed no less
+disturbed. That great room, so silent and imposing with its massive,
+superb decorations, different from anything she had seen, frightened
+her. She felt the vague terror which precedes an unknown operation.
+Besides, she was disturbed by the man's glowing eyes fixed on her, with
+a quiver on his cheeks and a twitching of his lips, as if they were
+tormented by thirst.
+
+She soon recovered from her timidity. She was used to these moments of
+shamefaced silence which came with the lone meeting of two strangers.
+She knew these interviews which begin hesitatingly and end in rough
+familiarity.
+
+She looked around with a professional smile, eager to end the unpleasant
+situation as soon as possible.
+
+"When you will. Where shall I undress?"
+
+Renovales started at the sound of her voice, as if he had forgotten that
+that image could speak. The simplicity with which she dispensed with
+explanations surprised him likewise.
+
+His son-in-law did things well; he had brought her well coached, callous
+to all surprises.
+
+The master showed her the way to the model's room and remained outside,
+prudently, turning his head without knowing why, so as not to see
+through the half-opened door. There was a long silence, broken by the
+rustle of falling clothes, the metallic click of buttons and hooks.
+Suddenly her voice came to the master, smothered, distant with a sort of
+timidity.
+
+"My stockings too? Must I take them off?"
+
+Renovales knew this objection of all models when they undressed for the
+first time. López de Sosa, carrying his desire of pleasing his father to
+the extreme, had spoken to her of giving her body wholly and she
+undressed without asking any further explanations, with the calm of
+accepted duty, thinking that her presence there was absurd for any other
+purpose.
+
+The painter came out of his silence; he called to her uneasily. She must
+not stay undressed. In the room there were clothes for her to put on.
+And without turning his head, reaching his arm through the half open
+door he pointed out blindly what he had left. There was a pink dress, a
+hat, shoes, stockings, a shirt.
+
+Pepita protested when she saw these cast-off garments, showing an
+aversion to putting on those underclothes which seemed worn and old.
+
+"The shirt, too? The stockings? No, the dress is enough."
+
+But the master begged her impatiently. She must put them all on; his
+painting demanded it. The long silence of the girl proved that she was
+complying, putting on these old garments, overcoming her repugnance.
+
+When she came out of the room she smiled with a sort of pity, as if she
+were laughing at herself. Renovales drew back, stirred by his own work,
+bewildered, feeling his temples throbbing, fancying that the pictures
+and furniture were whirling about him.
+
+Poor "Fregolina"! What a delightful clown! She felt like laughing at the
+thought of the storm of cries which would burst out in her theater if
+she should appear on the stage dressed in this fashion, of the jests of
+her friends if she should come into one of their dinners in these
+clothes of twenty years ago. She did not know these styles, and to her
+they seemed to belong to a remote antiquity. The master leaned over the
+back of a chair.
+
+"Josephina! Josephina!"
+
+It was she, such as he kept her in his memory--as she was that happy
+summer in the Roman mountains, in her pink dress and that rustic hat
+which gave her the dainty air of a village girl in the opera. Those
+fashions at which the younger generation laughed were for him the most
+beautiful, the most artistic that feminine taste had ever produced; they
+recalled the spring of his life.
+
+"Josephina! Josephina!"
+
+He remained silent, for these exclamations were born and died in his
+thoughts. He did not dare to move or speak, for fear this apparition of
+his dreams would vanish. She, smiling, was delighted at the effect her
+appearance had on the painter and seeing her reflection in a distant
+mirror, recognized that in this strange costume she did not look at all
+badly.
+
+"Where shall I go? Sitting or standing?"
+
+The master could hardly speak; his voice was hoarse, labored.
+
+She could pose as she wished. And she sat down in a chair adopting a
+posture which she considered very graceful--her cheek on one hand, her
+legs crossed, just as she was wont to sit in the green room of the
+theater, showing a bit of open-work pink silk stocking under her skirt.
+That too reminded the painter of the other.
+
+It was she! She sat before his eyes in bodily form, with the perfume of
+the form he loved.
+
+From instinct, from habit, he took up his palette and a brush stained
+with black, trying to trace the outlines of that figure. Ah, his hand
+was old, heavy, trembling! Where had his old time skill fled, his
+drawing, his striking qualities? Had he really ever painted? Was he
+truly the painter Renovales? He had suddenly forgotten everything. His
+head seemed empty, his hand paralyzed, the white canvas filled him with
+a terror of the unknown. He did not know how to paint; he could not
+paint. His efforts were useless; his mind was deadened. Perhaps,--some
+other day. Now his ears hummed, his face was pale, his ears were red,
+purple, as if they were on the point of dripping blood. In his mouth he
+felt the torment of a deathly thirst.
+
+The "Bella Fregolina" saw him throw down his palette and come toward her
+with a wild expression.
+
+But she felt no fear; she knew those distorted faces. This sudden rush
+was no doubt part of the program; she was warned when she went there
+after her friendly conversation with the son-in-law. That gentleman, so
+serious and so imposing, was like all the men she knew, as brutal as the
+rest.
+
+She saw him come to her with open arms, take her in a close embrace,
+fall at her feet with a hoarse cry, as if he were stifling; and she,
+gently and sympathetically encouraged him, bending her head, offering
+her lips with an automatic loving expression which was the implement of
+her profession.
+
+The kiss was enough to overcome the master completely.
+
+"Josephina! Josephina!"
+
+The perfume of the happy days rose from her clothes, surrounding her
+adorable person. It was her form, her flesh! He was going to die at her
+feet, suffocated by the immense desire that swelled within him. It was
+she; her very eyes--her eyes! And as he raised his glance to lose
+himself in their soft pupils, to gaze at himself in their trembling
+mirror, he saw two cold eyes, which examined him, half closed with
+professional curiosity, taking a scornful delight from their calm height
+in this intoxication of the flesh, this madness which groveled, moaning
+with desire.
+
+Renovales was thunderstruck with surprise; he felt something icy run
+down his back, paralyzing him; his eyes were veiled with a cloud of
+disappointment and sorrow.
+
+Was it really Josephina whom he had in his arms? It was her body, her
+perfume, her clothes, her beauty, pale as a dying flower. But no, it was
+not she! Those eyes! In vain did they look at him differently, alarmed
+at this sudden reaction; in vain they softened with a tender light,
+trained by habit. The deceit was useless; he saw beyond, he penetrated
+through those bright windows into the depths; he found only emptiness.
+The other's soul was not there. That maddening perfume no longer moved
+him; it was a false essence. He had before him merely a reproduction of
+the beloved vase, but the incense, the soul, lost forever.
+
+Renovales, standing up, drew away from her, looking at that woman with
+terror in his eyes, and finally threw himself on a couch, with his face
+in his hands.
+
+The girl, hearing him sob, was afraid and ran toward the models' room to
+take off those clothes, to flee. The man must be mad.
+
+The master was weeping. Farewell, youth! Farewell desire! Farewell
+dreams; enchanting sirens of life, that have fled forever. Useless the
+search, useless the struggle in the solitude of life. Death had him in
+his grasp, he was his and only through him could he renew his youth.
+These images were useless. He could not find another to call up the
+memory of the dead like this hired woman whom he had held in his
+arms--and still, it was not she!
+
+At the supreme moment, on the verge of reality, that indefinable
+something had vanished, that something which had been enclosed in the
+body of his Josephina, of his _maja_, whom he had worshiped in the
+nights of his youth.
+
+Immense, irreparable disappointment flooded his body with the icy calm
+of old age.
+
+Fall, ye towers of illusion! Sink, ye castles of fancy, built with the
+longing to make the way fair, to hide the horizon! The path still
+remained unbroken, barren and deserted. In vain would he sit by the
+roadside, putting off the hour of his departure, in vain would he bow
+his head that he might not see. The longer his rest, the longer his
+fearful torment. At every hour he was destined to gaze at the dreaded
+end of the last journey--unclouded, undisturbed--the dwelling from which
+there is no return--the black, greedy abyss--death!
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[A] The life of this character is the theme of _La Horda_, by
+the same author.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Woman Triumphant, by Vicente Blasco Ibañez
+
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Woman Triumphant, by Vicente Blasco Ibañez
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Woman Triumphant
+       (La Maja Desnuda)
+
+Author: Vicente Blasco Ibañez
+
+Translator: Hayward Keniston
+
+Release Date: July 19, 2006 [EBook #18876]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN TRIUMPHANT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Carlo Traverso, Janet Blenkinship, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreaders Europe at
+http://dp.rastko.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/imgcover.jpg" alt="Cover" title="Cover" /></div>
+
+<h1>WOMAN TRIUMPHANT</h1>
+
+<h2>(LA MAJA DESNUDA)</h2>
+
+<h4>BY</h4>
+
+<h2>VICENTE BLASCO IBA&Ntilde;EZ</h2>
+
+<h4>TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH</h4>
+
+<h4>BY</h4>
+
+<h3>HAYWARD KENISTON</h3>
+
+<h4>WITH A SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY THE AUTHOR</h4>
+
+<div class="figcenter"><img src="images/imgmotif.jpg" alt="Motif" title="Motif" /></div>
+
+<p class='center'>NEW YORK<br />
+E. P. DUTTON &amp; COMPANY<br />
+681 FIFTH AVENUE<br /><br />
+Copyright, 1920,<br />
+BY K. P. DUTTON &amp; COMPANY<br /><br />
+
+<i>All Rights Reserved</i></p>
+
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" width="70%" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'>First printing March, 1920</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Second printing March, 1920</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Third printing March, 1920</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Fourth printing March, 1920</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Fifth printing March, 1920</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Sixth printing March, 1920</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Seventh printing March. 1920</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Eighth printing March, 1920</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Ninth printing April, 1920</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Tenth printing April, 1920</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Eleventh printing April, 1920</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Twelfth printing April, 1920</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Thirteenth printing April, 1920</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'>Fourteenth printing April, 1920</td></tr>
+</table></div>
+
+<p class='center'>Printed In the United States of America</p>
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" width="65%" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#INTRODUCTORY_NOTE_TO_THE_ENGLISH_TRANSLATION"><b>INTRODUCTORY NOTE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#PART_I"><b>PART I</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>CHAPTER I</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#II"><b>CHAPTER II</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#III"><b>CHAPTER III</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#IV"><b>CHAPTER IV</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#V"><b>CHAPTER V</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#VI"><b>CHAPTER VI</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#PART_II"><b>PART II</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#Ia"><b>CHAPTER I</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#IIa"><b>CHAPTER II</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#IIIa"><b>CHAPTER III</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#IVa"><b>CHAPTER IV</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#Va"><b>CHAPTER V</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td>&nbsp;</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#PART_III"><b>PART III</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#Ib"><b>CHAPTER I</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#IIb"><b>CHAPTER II</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#IIIb"><b>CHAPTER III</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#IVb"><b>CHAPTER IV</b></a></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='left'><a href="#Vb"><b>CHAPTER V</b></a></td></tr>
+</table>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="INTRODUCTORY_NOTE_TO_THE_ENGLISH_TRANSLATION" id="INTRODUCTORY_NOTE_TO_THE_ENGLISH_TRANSLATION"></a>INTRODUCTORY NOTE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION</h2>
+
+
+<p>The title of this novel in the original, <i>La maja desnuda</i>, "The Nude
+Maja," is also the name of one of the most famous pictures of the great
+Spanish painter Francisco Goya.</p>
+
+<p>The word <i>maja</i> has no exact equivalent in English or in any of the
+modern languages. Literally, it means "bedecked," "showy," "gaudily
+attired," "flashy," "dazzling," etc., and it was applied at the end of
+the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth to a
+certain class of gay women of the lower strata of Madrid society
+notorious for their love of dancing and their fondness for exhibiting
+themselves conspicuously at bull-fights and all popular celebrations.
+The great ladies of the aristocracy affected the free ways and imitated
+the picturesque dress of the <i>maja</i>; Goya made this type the central
+figure of many of his genre paintings, and the dramatist Ram&oacute;n de la
+Cruz based most of his <i>sainetes</i>&mdash;farcical pieces in one act&mdash;upon the
+customs and rivalries of these women. The dress invented by the <i>maja</i>,
+consisting of a short skirt partly covered by a net with berry-shaped
+tassels, white <i>mantilla</i> and high shell-comb, is considered all over
+the world as the national costume of Spanish women.</p>
+
+<p>When the novel first appeared in Spain some years ago, a certain part of
+the Madrid public, unduly evil-minded, thought that it had discovered
+the identity of the real persons whom I had taken as models to draw my
+characters. This claim provoked a scandalous sensation and gave my book
+an unwholesome notoriety. It was thought that the protagonists of <i>La
+maja desnuda</i> were an illustrious Spanish painter of world-wide fame,
+who is my friend, and an aristocratic lady very celebrated at the time
+but now forgotten. I protested against this unwarranted and fantastic
+interpretation. Although I draw my characters from life, I do so only in
+a very fragmentary way (like all the great creative novelists whom I
+admire as masters in the field of fiction), using the materials gathered
+in my observations to form completely new types which are the direct and
+legitimate offspring of my own imagination. To use a figure: as a
+novelist I am a painter, not a photographer. Although I seek my
+inspiration in reality, I copy it in accordance with my own way of
+seeing it; I do not reproduce it with the mechanical servility of the
+photographic camera.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible that my imaginary heroes are vaguely reminiscent of
+beings who actually exist. Subconsciousness is the novelist's principal
+instrument, and this subconsciousness frequently mocks us, leading us to
+mistake for our own creation the things which we have unwittingly
+observed in Nature. But despite this, it is unfair, as well as risky,
+for the reader to assign the names of real persons to the characters of
+fiction, saying, "This is So-and-so."</p>
+
+<p>It would be equally unfair to consider this novel as audacious or of
+doubtful morality. The artistic world which I describe in <i>La maja
+desnuda</i> cannot be expected to have the same conception of life as the
+conventional world. Far from believing it immoral, I consider this one
+of the most moral novels I have ever written. And it is for this reason
+that, with a full realization of the standards demanded by the
+English-reading public, I have not hesitated to authorize the present
+translation without palliation or amputation, fully convinced that the
+reader will not find anything in this novel objectionable or offensive
+to his moral sense. Morality is not to be found in words but in deeds
+and in the lessons which these deeds teach.</p>
+
+<p>The difficulty of adequately translating the word <i>maja</i> into English
+led to the adoption of "Woman Triumphant" as the title of the present
+version. I believe it is a happy selection; it interprets the spirit of
+the novel. But it must be borne in mind that the woman here is the wife
+of the protagonist. It is the wife who triumphs, resurrecting in spirit
+to exert an overwhelming influence over the life of a man who had wished
+to live without her.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales, the hero, is simply the personification of human desire, this
+poor desire which, in reality, does not know what it wants, eternally
+fickle and unsatisfied. When we finally obtain what we desire, it does
+not seem enough. "More: I want more," we say. If we lose something that
+made life unbearable, we immediately wish it back as indispensable to
+our happiness. Such are we: poor deluded children who cried yesterday
+for what we scorn to-day and shall want again to-morrow; poor deluded
+beings plunging across the span of life on the Icarian wings of caprice.</p>
+
+<p class='author'><span class="smcap">Vicente Blasco Iba&ntilde;ez.</span></p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 2em;">New York, January, 1920.</span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+<h2>WOMAN TRIUMPHANT</h2>
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="PART_I" id="PART_I"></a>PART I</h2>
+
+<h3><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>I</h3>
+
+
+<p>It was eleven o'clock in the morning when Mariano Renovales reached the
+Museo del Prado. Several years had passed since the famous painter had
+entered it. The dead did not attract him; very interesting they were,
+very worthy of respect, under the glorious shroud of the centuries, but
+art was moving along new paths and he could not study there under the
+false glare of the skylights, where he saw reality only through the
+temperaments of other men. A bit of sea, a mountainside, a group of
+ragged people, an expressive head attracted him more than that palace,
+with its broad staircases, its white columns and its statues of bronze
+and alabaster&mdash;a solemn pantheon of art, where the neophytes vacillated
+in fruitless confusion, without knowing what course to follow.</p>
+
+<p>The master Renovales stopped for a few moments at the foot of the
+stairway. He contemplated the valley through which you approach the
+palace&mdash;with its slopes of fresh turf, dotted at intervals with the
+sickly little trees&mdash;with a certain emotion, as men are wont to
+contemplate, after a long absence, the places familiar to their youth.
+Above the scattered growth the ancient church of Los Jer&oacute;nimos, with its
+gothic masonry, outlined against the blue sky its twin towers and ruined
+arcades.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span> The wintry foliage of the Retiro served as a background for
+the white mass of the Cas&oacute;n. Renovales thought of the frescos of
+Giordano that decorated its ceilings. Afterwards, he fixed his attention
+on a building with red walls and a stone portal, which pretentiously
+obstructed the space in the foreground, at the edge of the green slope.
+Bah! The Academy! And the artist's sneer included in the same loathing
+the Academy of Language and the other Academies&mdash;painting, literature,
+every manifestation of human thought, dried, smoked, and swathed, with
+the immortality of a mummy, in the bandages of tradition, rules, and
+respect for precedent.</p>
+
+<p>A gust of icy wind shook the skirts of his overcoat, his long beard
+tinged with gray and his wide felt hat, beneath the brim of which
+protruded the heavy locks of his hair, that had excited so much comment
+in his youth, but which had gradually grown shorter with prudent
+trimming, as the master rose in the world, winning fame and money.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales felt cold in the damp valley. It was one of those bright,
+freezing days that are so frequent in the winter in Madrid. The sun was
+shining; the sky was blue; but from the mountains, covered with snow,
+came an icy wind, that hardened the ground, making it as brittle as
+glass. In the corners, where the warmth of the sun did not reach, the
+morning frost still glistened like a coating of sugar. On the mossy
+carpet, the sparrows, thin with the privations of winter, trotted back
+and forth like children, shaking their bedraggled feathers.</p>
+
+<p>The stairway of the Museo recalled to the master his early youth, when
+at sixteen he had climbed those steps many a time with his stomach faint
+from the wretched meal at the boarding-house. How many mornings he had
+spent in that old building copying Vel&aacute;squez! The place brought to his
+memory his dead hopes, a host of illusions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> that now made his smile;
+recollections of hunger and humiliating bargaining to make his first
+money by the sale of copies. His large, stern face, his brow that filled
+his pupils and admirers with terror lighted up with a merry smile. He
+recalled how he used to go into the Museo with halting steps, how he
+feared to leave the easel, lest people might notice the gaping soles of
+his boots that left his feet uncovered.</p>
+
+<p>He passed through the vestibule and opened the first glass door.
+Instantly the noises of the world outside ceased; the rattling of the
+carriages in the Prado; the bells of the street-cars, the dull rumble of
+the carts, the shrill cries of the children who were running about on
+the slopes. He opened the second door, and his face, swollen by the
+cold, felt the caress of warm air, buzzing with the vague hum of
+silence. The footfalls of the visitors reverberated in the manner
+peculiar to large, unoccupied buildings. The slam of the door, as it
+closed, resounded like a cannon shot, passing from hall to hall through
+the heavy curtains. From the gratings of the registers poured the
+invisible breath of the furnaces. The people, on entering, spoke in a
+low tone, as if they were in a cathedral; their faces assumed an
+expression of unnatural seriousness, as though they were intimidated by
+the thousands of canvases that lined the walls, by the enormous busts
+that decorated the circle of the rotunda and the middle of the central
+salon.</p>
+
+<p>On seeing Renovales, the two door-keepers, in their long frock-coats,
+started to their feet. They did not know who he was, but he certainly
+was somebody. They had often seen that face, perhaps in the newspapers,
+perhaps on match-boxes. It was associated in their minds with the glory
+of popularity, with the high honors reserved for people of distinction.
+Presently they recognized him. It was so many years since they had seen<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span>
+him there! And the two attendants, with their caps covered with
+gold-braid in their hands and with an obsequious smile, came forward
+towards the great artist.</p>
+
+<p>"Good morning, Don Mariano. Did Se&ntilde;or de Renovales wish something? Did
+he want them to call the curator?" They spoke with oily obsequiousness,
+with the confusion of courtiers who see a foreign sovereign suddenly
+enter their palace, recognizing him through his disguise.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales rid himself of them with a brusque gesture and cast a glance
+over the large decorative canvases of the rotunda, that recalled the
+wars of the 17th century; generals with bristling mustaches and plumed
+slouch-hat, directing the battle with a short baton, as though they were
+directing an orchestra, troops of arquebusiers disappearing downhill
+with banners of red and blue crosses at their front, forests of pikes
+rising from the smoke, green meadows of Flanders in the
+backgrounds&mdash;thundering, fruitless combats that were almost the last
+gasps of a Spain of European influence. He lifted a heavy curtain and
+entered the spacious salon, where the people at the other end looked
+like little wax figures under the dull illumination of the skylights.</p>
+
+<p>The artist continued straight ahead, scarcely noticing the pictures, old
+acquaintances that could tell him nothing new. His eyes sought the
+people without, however, finding in them any greater novelty. It seemed
+as though they formed a part of the building and had not moved from it
+in many years; good-natured fathers with a group of children before
+their knees, explaining the meaning of the pictures; a school teacher,
+with her well-behaved and silent pupils who, in obedience to the command
+of their superior, passed without stopping before the lightly clad
+saints; a gentleman with two priests, talking loudly, to show that he
+was intelligent and almost at home there; several foreign ladies with
+their veils<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span> caught up over their straw hats and their coats on their
+arms, consulting the catalogue, all with a sort of family-air, with
+identical expressions of admiration and curiosity, until Renovales
+wondered if they were the same ones he had seen there years before, the
+last time he was there.</p>
+
+<p>As he passed, he greeted the great masters mentally; on one side the
+holy figures of El Greco, with their greenish or bluish spirituality,
+slender and undulating; beyond, the wrinkled, black heads of Ribera,
+with ferocious expressions of torture and pain&mdash;marvelous artists, whom
+Renovales admired, while determined not to imitate them. Afterwards,
+between the railing that protects the pictures and the line of busts,
+show-cases and marble tables supported by gilded lions, he came upon the
+easels of several copyists. They were boys from the School of Fine Arts,
+or poverty-stricken young ladies with run-down heels and dilapidated
+hats, who were copying Murillos. They were tracing on the canvas the
+blue of the Virgin's robe or the plump flesh of the curly-haired boys
+that played with the Divine Lamb. Their copies were commissions from
+pious people; a <i>genre</i> that found an easy sale among the benefactors of
+convents and oratories. The smoke of the candles, the wear of years, the
+blindness of devotion would dim the colors, and some day the eyes of the
+worshipers, weeping in supplication, would see the celestial figures
+move with mysterious life on their blackened background, as they
+implored from them wondrous miracles.</p>
+
+<p>The master made his way toward the Hall of Vel&aacute;squez. It was there that
+his friend Tekli was working. His visit to the Museo had no other object
+than to see the copy that the Hungarian painter was making of the
+picture of <i>Las Meninas</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The day before, when the foreigner was announced in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> his studio, he had
+remained perplexed for a long while, looking at the name on the card.
+Tekli! And then all at once he remembered a friend of twenty years
+before, when he lived in Rome; a good-natured Hungarian, who admired him
+sincerely and who made up for his lack of genius with a silent
+persistency in his work, like a beast of burden.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales was glad to see his little blue eyes, hidden under his thin,
+silky eyebrows, his jaw, protruding like a shovel, a feature that made
+him look very much like the Austrian monarchs&mdash;his tall frame that bent
+forward under the impulse of excitement, while he stretched out his bony
+arms, long as tentacles, and greeted him in Italian:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, <i>maestro, caro maestro!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>He had taken refuge in a professorship, like all artists who lack the
+power to continue the upward climb, who fall in the rut. Renovales
+recognized the artist-official in his spotless suit, dark and proper, in
+his dignified glance that rested from time to time on his shining boots
+that seemed to reflect the whole studio. He even wore on one lapel of
+his coat the variegated button of some mysterious decoration. The felt
+hat, white as meringue, which he held in his hand, was the only
+discordant feature in this general effect of a public functionary.
+Renovales caught his hands with sincere enthusiasm. The famous Tekli!
+How glad he was to see him! What times they used to have in Rome! And
+with a smile of kindly superiority he listened to the story of his
+success. He was a professor in Budapest; every year he saved money in
+order to go and study in some celebrated European museum. At last he had
+succeeded in coming to Spain, fulfilling the desire he had cherished for
+many years.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Oh, Vel&aacute;squez! uel maestro, caro Mariano!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>And throwing back his head, with a dreamy expression<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> in his eyes, he
+moved his protruding jaw covered with reddish hair, with a voluptuous
+look, as though he were sipping a glass of his sweet native Tokay.</p>
+
+<p>He had been in Madrid for a month, working every morning in the Museo.
+His copy of <i>Las Meninas</i> was almost finished. He had not been to see
+his "Dear Mariano" sooner because he wanted to show him this work. Would
+he come and see him some morning in the Museo? Would he give him this
+proof of his friendship? Renovales tried to decline. What did he care
+for a copy? But there was an expression of such humble supplication in
+the Hungarian's little eyes, he showered him with so many praises of his
+great triumphs, expatiating on the success that his picture <i>Man
+Overboard!</i> had won at the last Budapest Exhibition, that the master
+promised to go to the Museo.</p>
+
+<p>And a few days later, one morning when a gentleman whose portrait he was
+painting canceled his appointment, Renovales remembered his promise and
+went to the Museo del Prado, feeling, as he entered, the same sensation
+of insignificance and homesickness that a man suffers on returning to
+the university where he has passed his youth.</p>
+
+<p>When he found himself in the Hall of Vel&aacute;squez, he suddenly felt seized
+with religious respect. There was a painter! <i>The</i> painter! All his
+irreverent theories of hatred for the dead were left outside the door.
+The charm of those canvases that he had not seen for many years rose
+again&mdash;fresh, powerful, irresistible; it overwhelmed him, awakening his
+remorse. For a long time he remained motionless, turning his eyes from
+one picture to another, eager to comprise in one glance the whole work
+of the immortal, while around him the hum of curiosity began again.</p>
+
+<p>"Renovales! That's Renovales!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The news had started from the door, spreading through the whole Museo,
+reaching the Hall of Vel&aacute;squez behind his steps. The groups of curious
+people stopped gazing at the pictures to look at that huge,
+self-possessed man who did not seem to realize the curiosity that
+surrounded him. The ladies, as they went from canvas to canvas, looked
+out of the corner of their eyes at the celebrated artist whose portrait
+they had seen so often. They found him more ugly, more commonplace than
+he appeared in the engravings in the papers. It did not seem possible
+that that "porter" had talent and painted women so well. Some young
+fellows approached to look at him more closely, pretending to gaze at
+the same pictures as the master. They scrutinized him, noting his
+external peculiarities with that desire for enthusiastic imitation which
+marks the novice. Some determined to copy his soft bow-tie and his
+tangled hair, with the fantastic hope that this would give them a new
+spirit for painting. Others complained to themselves that they were
+beardless and could not display the curly gray whiskers of the famous
+master.</p>
+
+<p>He, with his keen sensitiveness to praise, was not long in observing the
+atmosphere of curiosity that surrounded him. The young copyists seemed
+to stick closer to their easels, knitted their brows, dilated their
+nostrils, and moved their brushes slowly, with hesitation, knowing that
+he was behind them, trembling at every step that sounded on the inlaid
+floor, full of fear and desire that he might deign to cast a glance over
+their shoulders. He divined with a sort of pride what all the mouths
+were whispering, what all the eyes were saying, fixed absent-mindedly on
+the canvases only to turn toward him.</p>
+
+<p>"It's Renovales&mdash;the painter Renovales."</p>
+
+<p>The master looked for a long while at one of the copyists&mdash;an old man,
+decrepit and almost blind, with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span> heavy convex spectacles that gave him
+the appearance of a sea-monster, whose hands trembled with senile
+unsteadiness. Renovales recognized him. Twenty years before, when he
+used to study in the Museo, he had seen him in the same spot, always
+copying <i>Los Borrachos</i>. Even if he should become completely blind, if
+the picture should be lost, he could reproduce it by feeling. In those
+days they had often talked together, but the poor man could not have the
+remotest suspicion that the Renovales whom people talked so much about
+was the same lad who on more than one occasion had borrowed a brush from
+him, but whose memory was scarcely preserved in his mind, mummified by
+eternal imitation.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales thought of the kindness of the chummy Bacchus and the gang of
+ruffians of his court, who for half a century had been supporting the
+household of the copyist, and he fancied he could see the old wife, the
+married children, the grandchildren&mdash;a whole family supported by the old
+man's trembling hand.</p>
+
+<p>Some one whispered to him the news that was filling the Museo with
+excitement and the copyist, shrugging his shoulders disdainfully, raised
+his moribund glance from his work.</p>
+
+<p>And so Renovales was there, the famous Renovales! At last he was going
+to see the prodigy!</p>
+
+<p>The master saw those grotesque eyes like those of a sea-monster, fixed
+on him, with an ironical gleam behind the heavy lenses. The grafter! He
+had already heard of that studio, as splendid as a palace, behind the
+Retire What Renovales had in such plenty had been taken from men like
+him who, for want of influence, had been left behind. He charged
+thousands of dollars for a canvas, when Vel&aacute;squez worked for three
+<i>pesetas</i> a day and Goya painted his portraits for a couple of
+doubloons. Deceit, modernism, the audacity of the younger genera<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span>tion
+that lacked scruples, the ignorance of the simpletons that believe the
+newspapers! The only good thing was right there before him. And once
+more shrugging his shoulders scornfully, he lost his expression of
+ironical protest and returned to his thousandth copy of <i>Los Borrachos</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales, seeing that the curiosity about him was diminishing, entered
+the little hall that contained the picture of <i>Las Meninas</i>. There was
+Tekli in front of the famous canvas that occupies the whole back of the
+room, seated before his easel, with his white hat pushed back to leave
+free his throbbing brow that was contracted with a tenacious insistence
+on accuracy.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing Renovales, he rose hastily, leaving his palette on the piece of
+oil-cloth that protected the floor from spots of paint. Dear master! How
+thankful he was to him for this visit! And he showed him the copy,
+minutely accurate but without the wonderful atmosphere, without the
+miraculous realism of the original. Renovales approved with a nod; he
+admired the patient toil of that gentle ox of art, whose furrows were
+always alike, of geometric precision, without the slightest negligence
+or the least attempt at originality.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Ti piace?</i>" he asked anxiously, looking into his eyes to divine his
+thoughts. "<i>&Egrave; vero? &Egrave; vero?</i>" he repeated with the uncertainty of a
+child who fears that he is being deceived.</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly calmed by the evidences of Renovales' approval, that kept
+growing more extravagant to conceal his indifference, the Hungarian
+grasped both of his hands and lifted them to his breast.</p>
+
+<p><i>"Sono contento, maestro, sono contento."</i></p>
+
+<p>He did not want to let Renovales go. Since he had had the generosity to
+come and see his work, he could not let him go away, they would lunch
+together at the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> hotel where he lived. They would open a bottle of
+Chianti to recall their life in Rome; they would talk of the merry
+Bohemian days of their youth, of those comrades of various nationalities
+that used to gather in the Caf&eacute; del Greco,&mdash;some already dead, the rest
+scattered through Europe and America, a few celebrated, the majority
+vegetating in the schools of their native land, dreaming of a final
+masterpiece before which death would probably overtake them.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales felt overcome by the insistence of the Hungarian, who seized
+his hands with a dramatic expression, as though he would die at a
+refusal. Good for the Chianti! They would lunch together, and while
+Tekli was giving a few touches to his work, he would wait for him,
+wandering through the Museo, renewing old memories.</p>
+
+<p>When he returned to the Hall of Vel&aacute;squez, the assemblage had
+diminished; only the copyists remained bending over their canvases. The
+painter felt anew the influence of the great master. He admired his
+wonderful art, feeling at the same time the intense, historical sadness
+that seemed to emanate from all of his work. Poor Don Diego! He was born
+in the most melancholy period of Spanish history. His sane realism was
+fitted to immortalize the human form in all its naked beauty and fate
+had provided him a period when women looked like turtles, with their
+heads and shoulders peeping out between the double shell of their
+inflated gowns, and when men had a sacerdotal stiffness, raising their
+dark, ill-washed heads above their gloomy garb. He had painted what he
+saw; fear and hypocrisy were reflected in the eyes of that world. In the
+jesters, fools and humpbacks immortalized by Don Diego was revealed the
+forced merriment of a dying nation that must needs find distraction in
+the monstrous and absurd. The hypochondriac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span> temper of a monarchy weak
+in body and fettered in spirit by the terrors of hell, lived in all
+those masterpieces, that inspired at once admiration and sadness. Alas
+for the artistic treasures wasted in immortalizing a period which
+without Vel&aacute;squez would have fallen into utter oblivion!</p>
+
+<p>Renovales thought, too, of the man, comparing with a feeling of remorse
+the great painter's life with the princely existence of the modern
+masters. Ah, the munificence of kings, their protection of artists, that
+people talked about in their enthusiasm for the past! He thought of the
+peaceful Don Diego and his salary of three <i>pesetas</i> as court painter,
+which he received only at rare intervals; of his glorious name figuring
+among those of jesters and barbers in the list of members of the king's
+household, forced to accept the office of appraiser of masonry to
+improve his situation, of the shame and humiliation of his last years in
+order to gain the Cross of Santiago, denying as a crime before the
+tribunal of the Orders that he had received money for his pictures,
+declaring with servile pride his position as servant of the king, as
+though this title were superior to the glory of an artist. Happy days of
+the present, blessed revolution of modern life, that dignifies the
+artist, and places him under the protection of the public, an impersonal
+sovereign that leaves the creator of beauty free and ends by even
+following him in new-created paths!</p>
+
+<p>Renovales went up to the central gallery in search of another of his
+favorites. The works of Goya filled a large space on both walls. On one
+side the portraits of the kings and queens of the Bourbon decadence;
+heads of monarchs, or princes, crushed under their white wigs; sharp
+feminine eyes, bloodless faces, with their hair combed in the form of a
+tower. The two great painters had coincided in their lives with the
+moral downfall of two dynasties. In the Hall of Vel&aacute;squez the thin,
+bony,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span> fair-haired kings, of monastic grace and an&aelig;mic pallor, with
+their protruding under-jaws, and in their eyes an expression of doubt
+and fear for the salvation of their souls. Here, the corpulent, clumsy
+monarchs, with their huge, heavy noses, fatefully pendulous, as though
+by some mysterious relation they were dragging on the brain, paralyzing
+its functions; their thick underlips, hanging in sensual inertia; their
+eyes, calm as those of cattle, reflecting in their tranquil light
+indifference for everything that did not directly concern their own
+well-being. The Austrians, nervous, restless, vacillating with the fever
+of insanity, riding on theatrical chargers, in dark landscapes, bounded
+by the snowy crests of the Guadarrama, as sad, cold and crystallized as
+the soul of the nation; the Bourbons, peaceful, adipose,
+resting&mdash;surfeited&mdash;on their huge calves, without any other thought than
+the hunt of the following day or the domestic intrigue that would set
+the family in dissension, deaf to the storms that thundered beyond the
+Pyrenees. The one, surrounded by brutal-faced imbeciles, by gloomy
+pettifoggers, by Infantas with childish faces and the hollow skirts of a
+Virgin's image on an altar; the others bringing as a merry, unconcerned
+retinue, a rabble clad in bright colors, wrapped in scarlet capes or
+lace mantillas, crowned with ornamental combs or masculine hats&mdash;a race
+that, without knowing it, was sapping its heroism in picnics at the
+Canal or in grotesque amusements. The lash of invasion aroused them from
+their century-long infancy. The same great artist that for many years
+had portrayed the simple thoughtlessness of this gay people, showy and
+light-hearted as a comic-opera chorus, afterwards painted them, knife in
+hand, attacking the Mamelukes with the agility of monkeys, felling those
+Egyptian centaurs under their slashes, blackened with the smoke of a
+hundred battles, or dying with theatrical pride by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> the light of a
+lantern in the gloomy solitude of Moncloa, shot by the invaders.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales admired the tragic atmosphere of the canvas before him. The
+executioners hid their faces, leaning on their guns; they were the blind
+executors of fate, a nameless force, and before them rose the pile of
+palpitating, bloody flesh; the dead with strips of flesh torn off by the
+bullets, showing reddish holes, the living with folded arms, defying the
+murderers in a tongue they could not understand, or covering their faces
+with their hands, as though this instinctive movement could save them
+from the lead. A whole people died, to be born again. And beside this
+picture of horror and heroism, in another close to it, he saw Palafox,
+the Leonidas of Saragossa, mounted on horseback, with his stylish
+whiskers and the arrogance of a blacksmith in a captain-general's
+uniform, having in his bearing something of the appearance of a popular
+chieftain, holding in one hand, gloved in buckskin, the curved saber,
+and in the other the reins of his stocky, big-bellied steed.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales thought that art is like light, which acquires color and
+brightness from the objects it touches. Goya had passed through a stormy
+period; he had been a spectator of the resurrection of the soul of the
+people and his painting contained the tumultuous life, the heroic fury
+that you look for in vain in the canvases of that other genius, tied as
+he was to the monotonous existence of the palace, unbroken except by the
+news of distant wars in which they had little interest and whose
+victories, too late to be useful, had the coldness of doubt.</p>
+
+<p>The painter turned away from the dames of Goya, clad in white cambric,
+with their rosebud mouths and with their hair done up like a turban, to
+concentrate his attention on a nude figure, the luminous gleam of whose
+flesh seemed to throw the adjacent canvases in a shadow.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> He
+contemplated it closely for a long time, bending over the railing till
+the brim of his hat almost touched the canvas. Then he gradually moved
+away, without ceasing to look at it, until, at last, he sat down on a
+bench, still facing the picture with his eyes fixed upon it.</p>
+
+<p>"Goya's <i>Maja</i>. The <i>Maja Desnuda!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>He spoke aloud, without realizing it, as if his words were the
+inevitable outburst of the thoughts that rushed into his mind and seemed
+to pass back and forth behind the lenses of his eyes. His expressions of
+admiration were in different tones, marking a descending scale of
+memories.</p>
+
+<p>The painter looked with delight at the gracefully delicate form,
+luminous, as though within it burned the flame of life, showing through
+the pearl-pale flesh. A shadow, scarcely perceptible, veiled in mystery
+of her femininity; the light traced a bright spot on her smoothly
+rounded knees and once more the shadow reached down to her tiny feet
+with their delicate toes, rosy and babyish.</p>
+
+<p>The woman was small, graceful, and dainty; the Spanish Venus with no
+more flesh than was necessary to cover her supple, shapely frame with
+softly curving outlines. Her amber eyes that flashed slyly, were
+disconcerting with their gaze; her mouth had in its graceful corners the
+fleeting touch of an eternal smile; on her cheeks, elbows and feet the
+pink tone showed the transparency and the moist brilliancy of those
+shells that open their mysterious colors in the secret depths of the
+sea.</p>
+
+<p>"Goya's <i>Maja</i>. The <i>Maja Desnuda!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>He no longer said these words aloud, but his thought and his expression
+repeated them, his smile was their echo.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales was not alone. From time to time groups of visitors passed
+back and forth between his eyes and the picture, talking loudly. The
+tread of heavy feet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> shook the wooden floor. It was noon and the
+bricklayers from nearby buildings were taking advantage of the noon hour
+to explore those salons as if it were a new world, delighting in the
+warm air of the furnaces. As they went, they left footprints of plaster
+on the floor; they called out to each other to share their admiration
+before a picture; they were impatient to take it all in at a single
+glance; they waxed enthusiastic over the warriors in their shining armor
+or the elaborate uniforms of olden times. The cleverest among them
+served as guides to their companions, driving them impatiently. They had
+been there the day before. Go ahead! There was still a lot to see! And
+they ran toward the inner halls with the breathless curiosity of men who
+tread on new ground and expect something marvelous to rise before their
+steps.</p>
+
+<p>Amid this rush of simple admirers there passed, too, some groups of
+Spanish ladies. All did the same thing before Goya's work, as if they
+had been previously coached. They went from picture to picture,
+commenting on the fashions of the past, feeling a sort of longing for
+the curious old crinolines and the broad mantillas with the high combs.
+Suddenly they became serious, drew their lips together and started at a
+quick pace for the end of the gallery. Instinct warned them. Their
+restless eyes felt hurt by the nude in the distance; they seemed to
+scent the famous <i>Maja</i> before they saw her and they kept on&mdash;erect,
+with severe countenances, just as if they were annoyed by some rude
+fellow's advances in the street&mdash;passing in front of the picture without
+turning their faces, without seeing even the adjacent pictures nor
+stopping till they reached the Hall of Murillo.</p>
+
+<p>It was the hatred for the nude, the Christian, century-old abomination
+of Nature and truth, that rose instinc<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span>tively to protest against the
+toleration of such horrors in a public building which was peopled with
+saints, kings and ascetics.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales worshiped the canvas with ardent devotion, and placed it in a
+class by itself. It was the first manifestation in Spanish history of
+art that was free from scruples, unhampered by prejudice. Three
+centuries of painting, several generations of glorious names, succeeded
+one another with wonderful fertility; but not until Goya had the Spanish
+brush dared to trace the form of a woman's body, the divine nakedness
+that among all peoples has been the first inspiration of nascent art.
+Renovales remembered another nude, the Venus of Vel&aacute;squez, preserved
+abroad. But that work had not been spontaneous; it was a commission of
+the monarch who, at the same time that he was paying foreigners lavishly
+for their studies in the nude, wished to have a similar canvas by his
+court-painter.</p>
+
+<p>Religious oppression had obscured art for centuries. Human beauty
+terrified the great artists, who painted with a cross on their breasts
+and a rosary on their sword-hilts. Bodies were hidden under the stiff,
+heavy folds of sackcloth or the grotesque, courtly crinoline, and the
+painter never ventured to guess what was beneath them, looking at the
+model, as the devout worshiper contemplates the hollow mantle of the
+Virgin, not knowing whether it contains a body or three sticks to hold
+up the head. The joy of life was a sin. In vain a sun fairer than that
+of Venice shone on Spanish soil, futile was the light that burned upon
+the land with a brighter glow than that of Flanders: Spanish art was
+dark, lifeless, sober, even after it knew the works of Titian. The
+Renaissance, that in the rest of the world worshiped the nude as the
+supreme work of Nature, was covered here with the monk's cowl or the
+beggar's rags. The shining land<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span>scapes were dark and gloomy when they
+reached the canvas; under the brush the land of the sun appeared with a
+gray sky and grass that was a mournful green; the heads had a monkish
+gravity. The artist placed in his pictures not what surrounded him, but
+what he had within him, a piece of his soul&mdash;and his soul was fettered
+by the fear of dangers in the present life and torments in the life to
+come; it was black&mdash;black with sadness, as if it were dyed in the soot
+of the fires of the autos-de-f&eacute;.</p>
+
+<p>That naked woman with her curly head resting on her folded arms was the
+awakening of an art that had lived in isolation. The slight frame, that
+scarcely rested on the green divan and the fine lace cushions, seemed on
+the point of rising in the air with the mighty impulse of resurrection.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales thought of the two masters, equally great, and still so
+different. One had the imposing majesty of famous monuments&mdash;serene,
+correct, cold, filling the horizon of history with their colossal mass,
+growing old in glory without the centuries opening the least crack in
+their marble walls. On all sides the same fa&ccedil;ade&mdash;noble, symmetrical,
+calm, without the vagaries of caprice. It was reason&mdash;solid,
+well-balanced, alien to enthusiasm and weakness, without feverish haste.
+The other was as great as a mountain, with the fantastic disorder of
+Nature, covered with tortuous inequalities. On one side the wild, barren
+cliff; beyond, the glen, covered with blossoming heath; below, the
+garden with its perfumes and birds; on the heights, the crown of dark
+clouds, heavy with thunder and lightning. It was imagination in
+unbridled career, with breathless halts and new flights&mdash;its brow in the
+infinite and its feet implanted on earth.</p>
+
+<p>The life of Don Diego was summed up in these words: "He had painted."
+That was his whole biography. Never in his travels in Spain and Italy
+did he feel curious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> to see anything but pictures. In the court of the
+Poet-king, he had vegetated amid gallantries and masquerades, calm as a
+monk of painting, always standing before his canvas and model&mdash;to-day a
+jester, to-morrow a little Infanta&mdash;without any other desire than to
+rise in rank among the members of the royal household, to see a cross of
+red cloth sewed on his black jerkin. He was a lofty soul, enclosed in a
+phlegmatic body that never tormented him with nervous desires nor
+disturbed the calm of his work with violent passions. When he died the
+good Dona Juana, his wife, died too, as though they sought each other,
+unable to remain apart after their long, uneventful pilgrimage through
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>Goya "had lived." His life was that of the nobleman-artist&mdash;a stormy
+novel, full of mysterious amours. His pupils, on parting the curtains of
+his studio, saw the silk of royal skirts on their master's knees. The
+dainty duchesses of the period resorted to that robust Aragonese of
+rough, manly gallantry to have him paint their cheeks, laughing like mad
+at these intimate touches. When he contemplated some divine beauty on
+the tumbled bed, he transferred her form to the canvas by an
+irresistible impulse, an imperious necessity of reproducing beauty; and
+the legend that floated about the Spanish artist connected an
+illustrious name with all the beauties whom his brush immortalized.</p>
+
+<p>To paint without fear or prejudice, to take delight in reproducing on
+canvas the glory of the nude, the lustrous amber of woman's flesh with
+its pale roses like a sea-shell, was Renovales' desire and envy; to live
+like the famous Don Francisco&mdash;a free bird with restless, shining
+plumage in the midst of the monotony of the human barn-yard; in his
+passions, in his diversions, in his tastes, to be different from the
+majority of men, since he was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> already different from them in his way of
+appreciating life.</p>
+
+<p>But, ah! his existence was like that of Don Diego&mdash;unbroken, monotonous,
+laid out by level in a straight line. He painted, but he did not live.
+People praised his work for the accuracy with which he reproduced
+Nature, for the gleam of light, for the indefinable color of the
+atmosphere, and the exterior of things; but something was lacking,
+something that stirred within him and fought in vain to leap the vulgar
+barriers of daily existence.</p>
+
+<p>The memory of the romantic life of Goya made him think of his own life.
+People called him a master; they bought everything he painted at good
+prices, especially if it was in accordance with some one else's tastes
+and contrary to his artistic desire; he enjoyed a calm existence, full
+of comforts; in his studio, almost as splendid as a palace, the fa&ccedil;ade
+of which was reproduced in the illustrated magazines, he had a wife who
+was convinced of his genius and a daughter who was almost a woman and
+who made the troop of his intimate pupils stammer with embarrassment.
+The only evidences of his Bohemian past that remained were his soft felt
+hats, his long beard, his tangled hair and a certain carelessness in his
+dress; but when his position as a "national celebrity" demanded it, he
+took out of his wardrobe a dress suit with the lapel covered with the
+insignia of honorary orders and played his part in official receptions.
+He had thousands of dollars in the bank. In his studio, palette in hand,
+he conferred with his broker, discussing what sort of investments he
+ought to make with the year's profits. His name awakened no surprise or
+aversion in high society, where it was fashionable for ladies to have
+their portraits painted by him.</p>
+
+<p>In the early days he had provoked scandal and pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span>tests by his boldness
+in color and his revolutionary way of seeing Nature, but there was not
+connected with his name the least offence against the conventions of
+society. His women were women of the people, picturesque and repugnant;
+the only flesh that he had shown on his canvases was that of a sweaty
+laborer or the chubby child. He was an honored master, who cultivated
+his stupendous ability with the same calm that he showed in his business
+affairs.</p>
+
+<p>What was lacking in his life? Ah! Renovales smiled ironically. His whole
+life suddenly came to mind in a tumultuous rush of memories. Once more
+he fixed his glance on that woman, shining white like a pearl amphora,
+with her arms above her head, her breasts erect and triumphant, her eyes
+resting on him, as if she had known him for many years, and he repeated
+mentally with an expression of bitterness and dejection:</p>
+
+<p>"Goya's <i>Maja</i>, the <i>Maja Desnuda</i>!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II</h2>
+
+
+<p>As Mariano Renovales recalled the first years of his life, his memory,
+always sensitive to exterior impressions, called up the ceaseless clang
+of hammers. From the rising of the sun till the earth began to darken
+with the shadows of twilight the iron sang or groaned on the anvil,
+jarring the walls of the house and the floor of the garret, where
+Mariano used to play, lying on the floor at the feet of a pale, sickly
+woman with serious, deep-set eyes, who frequently dropped her sewing to
+kiss the little one with sudden violence, as though she feared she would
+not see him again.</p>
+
+<p>Those tireless hammers that had accompanied Mariano's birth, made him
+jump out of bed as soon as day broke and go down to the shop to warm
+himself beside the glowing forge. His father, a good-natured
+Cyclops&mdash;hairy and blackened&mdash;walked back and forth, turning over the
+irons, picking up files, giving orders to his assistants with loud
+shouts, in order to be heard in the din of the hammering. Two sturdy
+fellows, stripped to the waist, swung their arms, panting over the
+anvil, and the iron&mdash;now red, now golden&mdash;leaped in bright showers,
+scattered in crackling sprays, peopling the black atmosphere of the shop
+with a swarm of fiery flies that died away in the soot of the corners.</p>
+
+<p>"Take care, little one!" said the father, protecting his delicate
+curly-haired head with one of his great hands.</p>
+
+<p>The little fellow felt attracted by the colors of the glowing iron, till
+with the thoughtlessness of childhood<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> he sometimes tried to pick up the
+fragments that glowed on the ground like fallen stars.</p>
+
+<p>His father would push him out of the shop, and outside the door&mdash;black
+with soot&mdash;Mariano could see stretching out below him in the flood of
+sunlight the fields with their red soil cut into geometric figures by
+stone walls; at the bottom the valley with groups of poplars bordering
+the winding, crystal stream, and before him the mountains, covered to
+the very tops with dark pine woods. The shop was in the suburbs of a
+town and from it and the villages of the valley came the jobs that
+supported the blacksmith&mdash;new axles for carts, plowshares, scythes,
+shovels, and pitchforks in need of repair.</p>
+
+<p>The incessant pounding of the hammers seemed to stir up the little
+fellow, inspiring him with a fever of activity, tearing him from his
+childish amusements. When he was eight years old, he used to seize the
+rope of the bellows and pull it, delighting in the shower of sparks that
+the current of air drove out of the lighted coals. The Cyclops was
+gratified at the strength of his son, robust and vigorous like all the
+men of his family, with a pair of fists that inspired a wholesome
+respect in all the village lads. He was one of his own blood. From his
+poor mother, weak and sickly, he inherited only his propensity toward
+silence and isolation that sometimes, when the fever of activity died
+out in him, kept him for hours at a time watching the fields, the sky or
+the brooks that came tumbling down over the pebbles to join the stream
+at the bottom of the valley.</p>
+
+<p>The boy hated school, showing a holy horror of letters. His strong hands
+shook with uncertainty when he tried to write a word. On the other hand,
+his father and the other people in the shop admired the ease with which
+he could reproduce objects in a simple, ingenuous drawing, in which no
+detail of naturalness was lacking.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> His pockets were always full of bits
+of charcoal and he never saw a wall or stone that had a suggestion of
+whiteness, without at once tracing on it a copy of the objects that
+struck his eyes because of some marked peculiarity. The outside walls of
+the shop were black with little Mariano's drawings. Along the walls ran
+the pigs of Saint Anthony, with their puckered snouts and twisted tails,
+that wandered through the village and were supported by public charity,
+to be raffled on the festival of the saint. And in the midst of this
+stout procession stood out the profiles of the blacksmith and all the
+workmen of the shop, with an inscription beneath, that no doubt might
+arise as to their identity.</p>
+
+<p>"Come here, woman," the blacksmith would shout to his sick wife when he
+discovered a new sketch. "Come and see what our son has done. A devil of
+a boy!"</p>
+
+<p>And influenced by this enthusiasm, he no longer complained when Mariano
+ran away from school and the bellows rope to spend the whole day running
+through the valley or the village, a piece of charcoal in his hand,
+covering the rocks of the mountain and the house walls with black lines,
+to the despair of the neighbors. In the tavern in the Plaza Mayor he had
+traced the heads of the most constant customers, and the innkeeper
+pointed them out proudly, forbidding anyone to touch the wall for fear
+the sketches would disappear. This work was a source of vanity to the
+blacksmith when Sundays, after mass, he went in to drink a glass with
+his friends. On the wall of the rectory he had traced a Virgin, before
+which the most pious old women in the village stopped with deep sighs.</p>
+
+<p>The blacksmith with a flush of satisfaction accepted all the praises
+that were showered on the little fellow as if they belonged in large
+part to himself. Where had that prodigy come from, when all the rest of
+his family<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> were such brutes? And he nodded affirmatively when the
+village notables spoke of doing something for the boy. To be sure, he
+did not know what to do, but they were right; his Mariano was not
+destined to hammer iron like his father. He might become as great a
+personage as Don Rafael, a gentleman who painted saints in the capital
+of the province and was a teacher of painting in a big house, full of
+pictures, in the city. During the summer he came with his family to live
+in an estate in the valley.</p>
+
+<p>This Don Rafael was a man of imposing gravity; a saint with a large
+family of children, who wore a frock-coat as if it were a cassock and
+spoke with the suavity of a friar through his white beard that covered
+his thin, pink cheeks. In the village church they had a wonderful
+picture painted by him, a <i>Pur&iacute;sima</i>, whose soft glowing colors made the
+legs of the pious tremble. Besides, the eyes of the image had the
+marvelous peculiarity of looking straight at those who contemplated it,
+following them even though they changed position. A veritable miracle.
+It seemed impossible that that good gentleman who came up every morning
+in the summer to hear mass in the village, had painted that supernatural
+work. An Englishman had tried to buy it for its weight in gold. No one
+had seen the Englishman, but every one smiled sarcastically when they
+commented on the offer. Yes, indeed, they were likely to let the picture
+go! Let the heretics rage with all their millions. The <i>Pur&iacute;sima</i> would
+stay in her chapel to the envy of the whole world&mdash;and especially of the
+neighboring villages.</p>
+
+<p>When the parish priest went to visit Don Rafael to speak to him about
+the blacksmith's son, the great man already knew about his ability. He
+had seen his drawings in the village; the boy had some talent and it was
+a pity not to guide him in the right path. After this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> came the visits
+of the blacksmith and his son, both trembling when they found themselves
+in the attic of the country house that the great painter had converted
+into a studio, seeing close at hand the pots of color, the oily palette,
+the brushes and those pale blue canvases on which the rosy, chubby
+cheeks of the cherubim or the ecstatic face of the Mother of God were
+beginning to assume form.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the summer the good blacksmith decided to follow Don
+Rafael's advice. As long as he was so good as to consent to helping the
+boy, he was not going to be the one to interfere with his good fortune.
+The shop gave him enough to live on. All it meant was to work a few
+years longer, to support himself till the end of his life beside the
+anvil, without an assistant or a successor. His son was born to be
+somebody, and it was a serious sin to stop his progress by scorning the
+help of his good protector.</p>
+
+<p>His mother, who constantly grew weaker and more sickly, cried as if the
+journey to the capital of the province were to the end of the world.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, my boy. I shall never see you again."</p>
+
+<p>And in truth it was the last time that Mariano saw that pale face with
+its great expressionless eyes, now almost wiped out of his memory like a
+whitish spot in which, in spite of all his efforts, he could not succeed
+in restoring the outline of the features.</p>
+
+<p>In the city his life was radically different. Then for the first time he
+understood what it was his hands were striving for as they moved the
+charcoal over the whitewashed walls. Art was revealed to his eyes in
+those silent afternoons, passed in the convent where the provincial
+museum was situated, while his master, Don Rafael, argued with other
+gentlemen in the professor's hall, or signed papers in the secretary's
+office.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mariano lived at his protector's house, at once his servant and his
+pupil. He carried letters to the dean and the other canons, who were
+friends of his master and who accompanied him on his walks or spent
+social evenings in his studio. More than once he visited the locutories
+of nunneries, to deliver through the heavy gratings presents from Don
+Rafael to certain black and white shadows, which attracted by this
+sturdy young country boy, and aware that he meant to be a painter,
+overwhelmed him with the eager questions born of their seclusion. Before
+he went away they would hand him, through the revolving window, cakes
+and candied lemons or some other goody, and then, with a word of advice,
+would say good-by in their thin, soft voices, which sifted through the
+iron of the gratings.</p>
+
+<p>"Be a good boy, little Mariano. Study, pray. Be a good Christian, the
+Lord will protect you and perhaps you will get to be as great a painter
+as Don Rafael, who is one of the first in the world."</p>
+
+<p>How the master laughed at the memory of the childish simplicity that
+made him see in his master the most marvelous painter on earth!...
+Mornings, when he attended the classes in the School of Fine Arts, he
+grew angry at his comrades, a disrespectful rabble, brought up in the
+streets, sons of mechanics, who, as soon as the professor turned his
+back, pelted each other with the crumbs of bread meant to wipe out their
+drawings, and cursed Don Rafael, calling him a "Christer" and a
+"Jesuit."</p>
+
+<p>The afternoon Mariano passed in the studio, at his master's side. How
+excited he was the first time he placed a palette in his hand and
+allowed him to copy on an old canvas a child St. John which he had
+finished for a society!... While the boy with his forehead wrinkled in
+his eagerness, tried to imitate his master's work, he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> listened to the
+good advice that the master gave him without looking up from the canvas
+over which his angelic brush was running.</p>
+
+<p>Painting must be religious; the first pictures in the world had been
+inspired by religion; outside of it, life offered nothing but base
+materialism, loathsome sins. Painting must be ideal, beautiful. It must
+always represent pretty subjects, reproduce things as they ought to be,
+not as they really are, and above all, look up to heaven, since there is
+true life, not on this earth, a valley of tears. Mariano must modify his
+instincts&mdash;that was his master's advice&mdash;must lose his fondness for
+drawing coarse subjects&mdash;people as he saw them, animals in all their
+material brutality, landscapes in the same form as his eyes gazed upon.</p>
+
+<p>He must have idealism. Many painters were almost saints; only thus could
+they reflect celestial beauty in the faces of their madonnas. And poor
+Mariano strove to be ideal, to catch a little of that beatific serenity
+which surrounded his master.</p>
+
+<p>Little by little he came to understand the methods which Don Rafael
+employed to create these masterpieces which called forth cries of
+admiration from his circle of canons and the rich ladies that gave him
+commissions for pictures. When he intended to begin one of his
+<i>Pur&iacute;simas</i>, which were slowly invading the churches and convents of the
+province, he arose early and returned to his studio after mass and
+communion. In this way he felt an inner strength, a calm enthusiasm,
+and, if he felt depressed in the midst of the work, he once more had
+recourse to this inspiring medicine.</p>
+
+<p>The artist, besides, must be pure. He had taken a vow of chastity after
+he had reached the age of fifty, somewhat late to be sure, but it was
+not because he had not known before this certain means of reaching the
+per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>fect idealism of a celestial painter. His wife, who had grown old in
+her countless confinements, exhausted by the tiresome fidelity and
+virtue of the master, was no longer anything but the companion who gave
+the responses when he prayed his rosaries and Trisagia at night. He had
+several daughters, who weighed on his conscience like the reproachful
+memory of a disgraceful materialism, but some were already nuns and the
+others were on the way, while the idealism of the artist increased as
+these evidences of his impurity disappeared from the house and went to
+hide away in a convent where they upheld the artistic prestige of their
+father.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the great painter hesitated before a <i>Pur&iacute;sima</i>, which was
+always the same, as if he painted it with a stencil. Then he spoke
+mysteriously to his disciple:</p>
+
+<p>"Mariano, tell the gentlemen not to come to-morrow. We have a model."</p>
+
+<p>And when the studio was closed to the priests and the other respectable
+friends, with heavy step in came Rodr&iacute;guez, a policeman, with a
+cigarette stub under his heavy bristling mustache and one hand on the
+handle of his sword. Dismissed from the gendarmerie for intoxication and
+cruelty, and finding himself without employment, by some strange chance
+he began to devote himself to serving as a painter's model. The pious
+artist, who held him in a sort of terror, nagged by his constant
+petitions, had secured for him this position as policeman, and Rodr&iacute;guez
+took advantage of every opportunity to show his rough appreciation,
+slapping the master's shoulders with his great hands and blowing in his
+face, his breath redolent with nicotine and alcohol.</p>
+
+<p>"Don Rafael, you are my father. If anybody touches you, I'll fix him,
+whoever he is."</p>
+
+<p>And the ascetic artist, with a feeling of satisfaction at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> this
+protection, blushed and waved his hands in protest against the frankness
+of the rude fellow with his threats for the men he would "fix."</p>
+
+<p>He threw his helmet on the ground, handed his heavy sword to Mariano,
+and like a man that knows his duty, took out of the bottom of a chest a
+white woolen tunic and a piece of blue cloth like a cloak, placing both
+garments on his body with the skill of practice.</p>
+
+<p>Mariano looked at him with astonished eyes but without any temptation to
+laugh. They were mysteries of art, surprises that were reserved only for
+those who, like him, had the good fortune to live on terms of intimacy
+with the great master.</p>
+
+<p>"Ready, Rodr&iacute;guez?" Don Rafael asked impatiently.</p>
+
+<p>And Rodr&iacute;guez, erect in his bath robe with the blue rag hanging from his
+shoulders, clasped his hands and lifted his fierce gaze to the ceiling,
+without ceasing to suck the stub that singed his mustache. The master
+did not need the model except for the robes of the figure, to study the
+folds of the celestial garment, which must not reveal the slightest
+evidence of human contour. The possibility of copying a woman had never
+passed through his imagination. That was falling into materialism,
+glorifying the flesh, inviting temptation; Rodr&iacute;guez was all he needed;
+one must be an idealist.</p>
+
+<p>The model continued in his mystic attitude with his body lost in the
+innumerable folds of his blue and white raiment, while under it the
+square toes of his army boots stuck out, and he held up his grotesque,
+flat head, crowned with bristling hair, coughing and choking from the
+smoke of the cigar, without ceasing to look up and without separating
+his hands clasped in an attitude of worship.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, tired out by the industrious silence of the master and the
+pupil, Rodr&iacute;guez uttered a few grumbles that little by little took the
+form of words and finally de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>veloped into the story of the deeds of his
+heroic period, when he was a rural policeman and "could take a shot at
+anyone and pay for it afterward with a report." The <i>Pur&iacute;sima</i> grew
+excited at these memories. His hands separated with a tremble of
+murderous joy, the carefully arranged folds were disturbed, his
+bloodshot eyes no longer looked heavenward, and with a hoarse voice he
+told of tremendous beatings he administered, of men who fell to the
+ground writhing with pain, the shooting of prisoners which afterwards
+were reported as attempts to escape; and to give greater relief to this
+autobiography which he declaimed with bestial pride, he sprinkled his
+words with interjections as vulgar as they were lacking in respect for
+the first personages of the heavenly court.</p>
+
+<p>"Rodr&iacute;guez, Rodr&iacute;guez!" exclaimed the master, horror-stricken.</p>
+
+<p>"At your command, Don Rafael."</p>
+
+<p>And the <i>Pur&iacute;sima</i>, after passing the stub from one side of his mouth to
+the other, once more folded his hands, straightened up, showing his
+red-striped trousers under the tunic, and lost his gaze on high, smiling
+with ecstasy, as if he contemplated on the ceiling all his heroic deeds
+of which he felt so proud.</p>
+
+<p>Mariano was in despair before his canvas. He could never imitate his
+illustrious master. He was incapable of painting anything but what he
+saw, and his brush, after reproducing the blue and white raiment,
+stopped, hesitating at the face, calling in vain on imagination. After
+futile efforts it was the grotesque mask of Rodr&iacute;guez that appeared on
+the canvas.</p>
+
+<p>And the pupil had a sincere admiration for the ability of Don Rafael,
+for that pale head veiled in the light of its halo, a pretty,
+expressionless face of childish beauty,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span> which took the place of the
+policeman's fierce head in the picture.</p>
+
+<p>This sleight-of-hand seemed to the boy the most astounding evidence of
+art. When would he reach the easy prestidigitation of his master!</p>
+
+<p>With time the difference between Don Rafael and his pupil became more
+marked. At school his comrades gathered around him, recognizing his
+superiority and praising his drawings. Some professors, enemies of his
+master, lamented that such talent should be lost beside that
+"saint-painter." Don Rafael was surprised at what Mariano did outside of
+his studio&mdash;figures and landscapes, directly observed which, according
+to him, breathed the brutality of life.</p>
+
+<p>His circle of serious gentlemen began to discover some merit in the
+pupil.</p>
+
+<p>"He will never reach your height, Don Rafael," they said. "He lacks
+unction, he has no idealism, he will never paint a good Virgin&mdash;but as a
+worldly painter he has a future."</p>
+
+<p>The master, who loved the boy for his submissive nature and the purity
+of his habits, tried in vain to make him follow the right way. If he
+would only imitate him, his fortune was made. He would die without a
+successor and his studio and his fame would be his. The boy only had to
+see how, little by little, like a good ant of the Lord, the master had
+gathered together a fair sized future with his brush. By virtue of his
+idealism, he had his country house there in the village, and no end of
+estates, the tenants of which came and visited him in his studio,
+carrying on endless discussions over the payment and amount of the rents
+in front of the poetic Virgins. The Church was poor because of the
+impiety of the times, it could not pay as generously as in other
+centuries, but commissions were numerous, and a Virgin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> in all her
+purity was a matter of only three days&mdash;but young Renovales made a
+troubled, wry face, as if a painful sacrifice were demanded of him.</p>
+
+<p>"I can't, Master. I'm an idiot. I don't know how to invent things. I
+paint only what I see."</p>
+
+<p>And when he began to see naked bodies in the so-called "life" class he
+devoted himself zealously to this study, as if the flesh caused in him
+the most violent intoxication. Don Rafael was appalled by finding in the
+corners of his house sketches that portrayed shameful nudes in all their
+reality. Besides, the progress of his pupil caused him some uneasiness;
+he saw in his painting a vigor that he himself had never had. He even
+noted some falling-off in his circle of admirers. The good canons, as
+always, admired his Virgins, but some of them had their portraits
+painted by Mariano, praising the skill of his brush.</p>
+
+<p>One day he said to his pupil, firmly:</p>
+
+<p>"You know that I love you as I would a son, Mariano, but you are wasting
+your time with me. I cannot teach you anything. Your place is somewhere
+else. I thought you might go to Madrid. There you will find men of your
+stamp."</p>
+
+<p>His mother was dead; his father was still in the blacksmith shop, and
+when he saw him come home with several duros, the pay for portraits he
+had made, he looked on this sum as a fortune. It did not seem possible
+that anyone would give money in exchange for colors. A letter from Don
+Rafael convinced him. Since that wise gentleman advised that his son
+should go to Madrid, he must agree.</p>
+
+<p>"Go to Madrid, my boy, and try to make money soon, for your father is
+old and will not always be able to help you."</p>
+
+<p>At the age of sixteen, Renovales landed in Madrid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> and finding himself
+alone, with only his wishes for his guide, devoted himself zealously to
+his work. He spent the morning in the Museo del Prado, copying all the
+heads in Vel&aacute;squez's pictures. He felt that till then he had been blind.
+Besides, he worked in an attic studio with some other companions and
+evenings painted water-colors. By selling these and some copies, he
+managed to eke out the small allowance his father sent him.</p>
+
+<p>He recalled with a sort of homesickness those years of poverty, of real
+misery, the cold nights in his wretched bed, the irritating
+meals&mdash;Heaven knows what was in them&mdash;eaten in a bar-room near the
+Teatro Real; the discussions in the corner of a caf&eacute;, under the hostile
+glances of the waiters who were provoked that a dozen long-haired youths
+should occupy several tables and order all together only three coffees
+and many bottles of water.</p>
+
+<p>The light-hearted young fellows stood their misery without difficulty
+and, to make up for it, what a fill of fancies they had, what a glorious
+feast of hopes! A new discovery every day. Renovales ran through the
+realm of art like a wild colt, seeing new horizons spreading out before
+him, and his career caused an outburst of scandal that amounted to
+premature celebrity. The old men said that he was the only boy who "had
+the stuff in him"; his comrades declared that he was a "real painter,"
+and in their iconoclastic enthusiasm compared his inexperienced works
+with those of the recognized old masters&mdash;"poor humdrum artists" on
+whose bald pates they felt obliged to vent their spleen in order to show
+the superiority of the younger generation.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales' candidacy for the fellowship at Rome caused a veritable
+revolution. The younger set, who swore by him and considered him their
+illustrious captain, broke out in threats, fearful lest the "old boys"
+should sacrifice their idol.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When at last his manifest superiority won him the fellowship, there were
+banquets in his honor, articles in the papers, his picture was published
+in the illustrated magazines, and even the old blacksmith made a trip to
+Madrid, to breathe with tearful emotion part of the incense that was
+burned for his son.</p>
+
+<p>In Rome a cruel disappointment awaited Renovales. His countrymen
+received him rather coldly. The younger men looked on him as a rival and
+waited for his next works with the hope of a failure; the old men who
+lived far from their fatherland examined him with malignant curiosity.
+"And so that big chap was the blacksmith's son, who caused so much
+disturbance among the ignorant people at home!... Madrid was not Rome.
+They would soon see what that <i>genius</i> could do!"</p>
+
+<p>Renovales did nothing in the first months of his stay in Rome. He
+answered with a shrug of his shoulders those who asked for his pictures
+with evident innuendo. He had come there not to paint but to study; that
+was what the State was paying him for. And he spent more than half a
+year drawing, always drawing in the famous art galleries, where, pencil
+in hand, he studied the famous works. The paint boxes remained unopened
+in one corner of the studio.</p>
+
+<p>Before long he came to detest the great city, because of the life the
+artists led in it. What was the use of fellowships? People studied less
+there than in other places. Rome was not a school, it was a market. The
+painting merchants set up their business there, attracted by the
+gathering of artists. All&mdash;old and beginners, famous and unknown&mdash;felt
+the temptation of money; all were seduced by the easy comforts of life,
+producing works for sale, painting pictures in accordance with the
+suggestions of some German Jews who frequented the studios,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> designating
+the sizes and the types that were in style in order to spread them over
+Europe and America.</p>
+
+<p>When Renovales visited the studios, he saw nothing but <i>genre</i> pictures,
+sometimes gentlemen in long dress coats, others tattered Moors or
+Calabrian peasants. They were pretty, faultless paintings, for which
+they used as models a manikin, or the families of <i>ciociari</i> whom they
+hired every morning in the Piazza di Espagna beside the Sealinata of the
+Trinity; the everlasting country-woman, swarthy and black-eyed, with
+great hoops in her ears and wearing a green skirt, a black waist and a
+white head-dress caught up on her hair with large pins; the usual old
+man with sandals, a woolen cloak and a pointed hat with spiral bands on
+his snowy head that was a fitting model for the Eternal Father. The
+artists judged each other's ability by the number of thousand lire they
+took in during a year; they spoke with respect of the famous masters who
+made a fortune out of the millionaires of Paris and Chicago for
+easel-pictures that nobody saw. Renovales was indignant. This sort of
+art was almost like that of his first master, even if it was "worldly"
+as Don Rafael had said. And that was what they sent him to Rome for!</p>
+
+<p>Unpopular with his countrymen because of his brusque ways, his rude
+tongue and his honesty, which made him refuse all commissions from the
+art merchants, he sought the society of artists from other countries.
+Among the cosmopolitan group of young painters who were quartered in
+Rome, Renovales soon became popular.</p>
+
+<p>His energy, his exuberant spirits, made him a congenial, merry comrade,
+when he appeared in the studios of the Via di Babuino or in the
+chocolate rooms and caf&eacute;s of the Corso, where the artists of different
+nationalities gathered in friendly company.</p>
+
+<p>Mariano, at the age of twenty, was an athletic fellow,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span> a worthy scion
+of the man who was pounding iron from morning till night in a far away
+corner of Spain. One day an English youth, a friend of his, read him a
+page of Ruskin in his honor. "The plastic arts are essentially
+athletic." An invalid, a half paralyzed man, might be a great poet, a
+celebrated musician, but to be a Michael Angelo or a Titian a man must
+have not merely a privileged soul, but a vigorous body. Leonardo da
+Vinci broke a horseshoe in his hands; the sculptors of the Renaissance
+worked huge blocks of marble with their titanic arms or chipped off the
+bronze with their gravers; the great painters were often architects and,
+covered with dust, moved huge masses. Renovales listened thoughtfully to
+the words of the great English &aelig;stheticist. He, too, was a strong soul
+in an athlete's body.</p>
+
+<p>The appetites of his youth never went beyond the manly intoxications of
+strength and movement. Attracted by the abundance of models which Rome
+offered, he often undressed a <i>ciociara</i> in his studio, delighting in
+drawing the forms of her body. He laughed, like the big giant that he
+was, he spoke to her with the same freedom as if she were one of the
+poor women that came out to stop him at night as he returned alone to
+the Academy of Spain, but when the work was over and she was
+dressed&mdash;out with her! He had the chastity of strong men. He worshiped
+the flesh, but only to copy its lines. The animal contact, the chance
+meeting, without love, without attraction, with the inner reserve of two
+people who do not know each other and who look on each other with
+suspicion, filled him with shame. What he wanted to do was to study, and
+women only served as a hindrance in great undertakings. He consumed the
+surplus of his energy in athletic exercise. After one of his feats of
+strength, which filled his comrades with enthusiasm, he would come in
+fresh, serene, indifferent, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> though he were coming out of a bath. He
+fenced with the French painters of the Villa Medici; learned to box with
+Englishmen and Americans; organized, with some German artists,
+excursions to a grove near Rome, which were talked about for days in the
+caf&eacute;s of the Corso. He drank countless healths with his companions to
+the Kaiser whom he did not know and for whom he did not care a rap. He
+would thunder in his noisy voice the traditional <i>Gaudeamus Igitur</i> and
+finally would catch two models of the party around the waist and with
+his arms stretched out like a cross carry them through the woods till he
+dropped them on the grass as if they were feathers. Afterwards he would
+smile with satisfaction at the admiration of those good Germans, many of
+them sickly and near-sighted, who compared him with Siegfried and the
+other muscular heroes of their warlike mythology.</p>
+
+<p>In the Carnival season, when the Spaniards organized a cavalcade of the
+Quixote, he undertook to represent the knight Pentapolin&mdash;"him of the
+rolled-up sleeves,"&mdash;and in the Corso there were applause and cries of
+admiration for the huge biceps that the knight-errant, erect on his
+horse, revealed. When the spring nights came, the artists marched in a
+procession across the city to the Jewish quarter to buy the first
+artichokes&mdash;the popular dish in Rome, in the preparation of which an old
+Hebrew woman was famous. Renovales went at the head of the
+<i>carciofalatta</i>, bearing the banner, starting the songs which were
+alternated with the cries of all sorts of animals; and his comrades
+marched behind him, reckless and insolent under the protection of such a
+chieftain. As long as Mariano was with them there was no danger. They
+told the story that in the alleys of the Trastevere he had given a
+deadly beating to two bullies of the district, after taking away their
+stilettos.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the athlete shut himself up in the Academy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> and did not come
+down to the city. For several days they talked about him at the
+gatherings of artists. He was painting; an exhibition that was going to
+take place in Madrid was close at hand and he wanted to take to it a
+picture to justify his fellowship. He kept the door of his studio closed
+to everyone, he did not permit comment nor advice, the canvas would
+appear just as he conceived it. His comrades soon forgot him and
+Renovales ended his work in seclusion, and left for his country with it.</p>
+
+<p>It was a complete success, the first important step on the road that was
+to lead him to fame. Now he remembered with shame, with remorse, the
+glorious uproar his picture "The Victory of Pavia" stirred up. People
+crowded in front of the huge canvas, forgetting the rest of the
+Exhibition. And as, at that time, the Government was strong, the Cortes
+was closed and there was no serious accident in any of the bull-rings,
+the newspapers, for lack of any more lively event, hastened in cheap
+rivalry to reproduce the picture, to talk about it, publishing portraits
+of the author, profiles, as well as front views, large and small,
+expatiating on his life in Rome and his eccentricities, and recalled
+with tears of emotion the poor old man who far away in his village was
+pounding iron, hardly knowing of his son's glory.</p>
+
+<p>With one bound Renovales passed from obscurity to the light of
+apotheosis. The older men whose duty it was to judge his work became
+benevolent and extended kindly sympathy. The little tiger was getting
+tame. Renovales had seen the world and now he was coming back to the
+good traditions; he was going to be a painter like the rest. His picture
+had portions that were like Vel&aacute;squez, fragments worthy of Goya, corners
+that recalled El Greco; there was everything in it, except Renovales,
+and this amalgam of reminiscences was its chief<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> merit, what attracted
+general applause and won it the first medal.</p>
+
+<p>A magnificent debut it was. A dowager duchess, a great protectress of
+the arts, who never bought a picture or a statue but who entertained at
+her table painters and sculptors of renown, finding in this an
+inexpensive pleasure and a certain distinction as an illustrious lady,
+wished to make Renovales' acquaintance. He overcame the stand-offishness
+of his nature that kept him away from all social relations. Why should
+he not know high society? He could go wherever other men could. And he
+put on his first dress-coat, and after the banquets of the duchess,
+where his way of arguing with members of the Academy provoked peals of
+merry laughter, he visited other salons and for several weeks was the
+idol of society which, to be sure, was somewhat scandalized by his faux
+pas, but still pleased with the timidity that overcame him after his
+daring sallies. The younger set liked him because he handled a sword
+like a Saint George. Although a painter and son of a blacksmith, he was
+in every way a respectable person. The ladies flattered him with their
+most amiable smiles, hoping that the fashionable artist would honor them
+with a portrait gratis, as he had done with the duchess.</p>
+
+<p>In this period of high-life, always in dress clothes from seven in the
+evening, without painting anything but women who wanted to appear pretty
+and discussed gravely with the artist which gown they should put on to
+serve as a model, Renovales met his wife Josephina.</p>
+
+<p>The first time that he saw her among so many ladies of arrogant bearing
+and striking presence, he felt attracted towards her by force of
+contrast. The bashfulness, the modesty, the insignificance of the girl
+impressed him. She was small, her face offered no other beauty than that
+of youth, her body had the charm of delicacy.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> Like himself, the poor
+girl was there out of a sort of condescendence on the part of the
+others; she seemed to be there by sufferance and she shrank in it, as if
+afraid of attracting attention, Renovales always saw her in the same
+evening gown somewhat old, with that appearance of weariness which a
+garment constantly made over to follow the course of the fashions is
+wont to acquire. The gloves, the flowers, the ribbons had a sort of
+sadness in their freshness, as if they betrayed the sacrifices, the
+domestic exertions it had taken to procure them. She was on intimate
+terms with all the girls who made a triumphal entrance into the
+drawing-rooms, inspiring praise and envy with their new toilettes; her
+mother, a majestic lady, with a big nose and gold glasses, treated the
+ladies of the noblest families with familiarity; but in spite of this
+intimacy there was apparent around the mother and daughter the gap of
+somewhat disdainful affection, in which commiseration bore no small
+part. They were poor. The father had been a diplomat of some distinction
+who, at his death, left his wife no other source of income than the
+widow's pension. Two sons were abroad as attach&eacute;s of an embassy,
+struggling with the scantiness of their salary and the demands of their
+position. The mother and daughter lived in Madrid, chained to the
+society in which they were born, fearing to abandon it, as if that would
+be equivalent to a degradation, remaining during the day in a
+fourth-floor apartment, furnished with the remnants of their past
+opulence, making unheard-of sacrifices in order to be able in the
+evening to rub elbows worthily with those who had been their equals.</p>
+
+<p>Some relative of Do&ntilde;a Emilia, the mother, contributed to her support,
+not with money (never that!) but by loaning her the surplus of their
+luxury, that she and her daughter might maintain a pale appearance of
+comfort.</p>
+
+<p>Some of them loaned them their carriage on certain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> days, so that they
+might drive through the Castellana and the Retiro, bowing to their
+friends as the carriages passed; others sent them their box at the Opera
+on evenings when the bill was not a brilliant one. Their pity made them
+remember them, too, when they sent out invitations to birthday dinners,
+afternoon teas, and the like. "We mustn't forget the Torrealtas, poor
+things." And the next day, the society reporters included in the list of
+those present at the function "the charming Se&ntilde;orita de Torrealta and
+her distinguished mother, the widow of the famous diplomat of
+imperishable memory," and Do&ntilde;a Emilia, forgetting her situation,
+fancying she was in the good old times, went to everything, in the same
+black gown, annoying with her "my dears" and her gossip the great ladies
+whose maids were richer and ate better than she and her daughter. If
+some old gentleman took refuge beside her, the diplomat's wife tried to
+overwhelm him with the majesty of her recollections. "When we were
+ambassadors in Stockholm." "When my friend Eug&eacute;nie was empress...."</p>
+
+<p>The daughter, endowed with her instinctive girlish timidity, seemed
+better to realize her position. She would remain seated among the older
+ladies, only rarely venturing to join the other girls who had been her
+boarding-school companions and who now treated her condescendingly,
+looking on her as they would upon a governess who had been raised to
+their station, out of remembrance for the past. Her mother was annoyed
+at her timidity. She ought to dance a lot, be lively and bold, like the
+other girls, crack jokes, even if they were doubtful, that the men might
+repeat them and give her the reputation of being a wit. It was
+incredible that with the bringing up she had had, she should be so
+insignificant. The idea! The daughter of a great man about whom people
+used to crowd as soon as he entered the first salons in Europe!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> A girl
+who had been educated at the school of the Sacred Heart in Paris, who
+spoke English, a little German, and spent the day reading when she did
+not have to clean a pair of gloves or make over a dress! Didn't she want
+to get married? Was she so well satisfied with that fourth-story
+apartment, that wretched cell so unworthy of their name?</p>
+
+<p>Josephina smiled sadly. Get married! She never would get to that in the
+society they frequented. Everyone knew they were poor. The young men
+thronged the drawing-rooms in search of women with money. If by chance
+one of them did come up to her, attracted by her pale beauty, it was
+only to whisper to her shameful suggestions while they danced; to
+propose uncompromising engagements, friendly relations with a prudence
+modeled on the English, flirtations that had no result.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales did not realize how his friendship with Josephina began.
+Perhaps it was the contrast between himself and the little woman who
+hardly came up to his shoulder and who seemed about fifteen when she was
+already past twenty. Her soft voice with its slight lisp came to his
+ears like a caress. He laughed when he thought of the possibility of
+embracing that graceful, slender form; it would break in pieces in his
+pugilist's hands, like a wax doll. Mariano sought her out in the
+drawing-rooms which she and her mother were accustomed to frequent, and
+spent all the time sitting at her side, feeling an impulse to confide in
+her as a brother, a desire of telling her all about herself, his past,
+his present work, his hopes, as if she were a room-mate. She listened to
+him, looking at him with her brown eyes that seemed to smile at him,
+nodding assent, often without having heard what he said, receiving like
+a caress the exuberance of that nature which seemed to overflow in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+waves of fire. He was different from all the men she had known.</p>
+
+<p>When someone&mdash;nobody knows who&mdash;perhaps one of Josephina's friends,
+noticed this intimacy, to make sport of her, she spread the news. The
+painter and the Torrealta girl were engaged. That was when the
+interested parties discovered that they loved each other. It was
+something more than friendship that made Renovales pass through
+Josephina's street mornings, looking at the high windows in the hope of
+seeing her dainty silhouette through the panes. One night at the
+duchess' when they were left alone in the hallway, Renovales caught her
+hand and lifted it to his lips, but so timidly that they scarcely
+touched her glove. He was afraid after his rudeness, felt ashamed of his
+violence; he thought he was hurting the delicate, slender girl; but she
+let her hand stay in his, and at the same time bowed her head and began
+to cry.</p>
+
+<p>"How good you are, Mariano!"</p>
+
+<p>She felt the most intense gratitude, when she realized that she was
+loved for the first time; loved truly, by a man of some distinction, who
+fled from the women of fortune to seek a humble, neglected girl like
+her. All the treasures of affection which had been accumulating in the
+isolation of her humiliating life overflowed. How she could love the man
+who loved her, taking her out of that parasite's existence, lifting her
+by his strength and affection to the level of those who scorned her!</p>
+
+<p>The noble widow of Torrealta gave a cry of indignation when she learned
+of the engagement of the painter and her daughter. "The blacksmith's
+son!" "The illustrious diplomat of imperishable memory!" But as if this
+protest of her pride opened her eyes, she thought of the years her
+daughter had spent going from one drawing-room to another, without
+anyone paying any attention<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> to her. What dunces men were! She thought,
+too, that a celebrated painter was a personage; she remembered the
+articles devoted to Renovales because of his last picture, and, above
+all, a thing that had the most effect on her, she knew by hearsay of the
+great fortune that artists amassed abroad, the hundreds of thousands of
+francs paid for a canvas that could be carried under your arm. Why might
+not Renovales be one of the fortunate?</p>
+
+<p>She began to annoy her countless relatives with requests for advice. The
+girl had no father and they must take his place. Some answered
+indifferently. "The painter! Hump! Not bad!" evidencing by their
+coldness that it was all the same to them if she married a
+tax-collector. Others insulted her unwittingly by showing their
+approval. "Renovales? An artist with a great future before him. What
+more do you want? You ought to be thankful he has taken a fancy to her."
+But the advice that decided her was that of her famous cousin, the
+Marquis of Tarfe, a man to whom she looked upon as the most
+distinguished citizen in the country, without doubt because of his
+office as permanent head of the Foreign Service, for every two years he
+was made Minister of Foreign Affairs.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks very good to me," said the nobleman, hastily, for they were
+waiting for him in the Senate. "It is a modern marriage and we must keep
+up with the times. I am a conservative, but liberal, very liberal and
+very modern. I will protect the children. I like the marriage. Art
+joining its prestige with a historic family! The popular blood that
+rises through its merits and is mingled with that of the ancient
+nobility!"</p>
+
+<p>And the Marquis of Tarfe, whose marquisate did not go back half a
+century, with these rhetorical figures of an orator in the Senate and
+his promises of protection, convinced the haughty widow. She was the one
+who spoke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> to Renovales, to relieve him of an explanation that would be
+trying because of the timidity he felt in this society that was not his
+own.</p>
+
+<p>"I know all about it, Mariano, my dear, and you have my consent."</p>
+
+<p>But she did not like long engagements. When did he intend to get
+married? Renovales was more eager for it than the mother. Josephina was
+different from other women who hardly aroused his desire. His chastity,
+which had been like that of a rough laborer, developed into a feverish
+desire to make that charming doll his own as soon as possible. Besides,
+his pride was flattered by this union. His fianc&eacute;e was poor; her only
+dowry was a few ragged clothes, but she belonged to a noble family,
+ministers, generals&mdash;all of noble descent. They could weigh by the ton
+the coronets and coats-of-arms of those countless relatives who did not
+pay much attention to Josephina and her mother, but who would soon be
+his family. What would Se&ntilde;or Ant&oacute;n think, hammering iron in the suburbs
+of his town? What would his comrades in Rome say, whose lot consisted in
+living with the <i>ciociari</i> who served as their models, and marrying them
+afterward out of fear for the stiletto of the venerable Calabrian who
+insisted on providing a legitimate father for his grandsons!</p>
+
+<p>The papers had much to say about the wedding, repeating with slight
+variations the very phrases of the Marquis of Tarfe, "Art uniting with
+nobility." Renovales wanted to leave for Rome with Josephina as soon as
+the marriage was celebrated. He had made all the arrangements for his
+new life there, investing in it all the money he had received from the
+State for his picture and the product of several pictures for the Senate
+for which he received commissions through his illustrious
+relative-to-be.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A friend in Rome (the jolly Cotoner) had hired for him an apartment in
+the Via Margutta and had furnished it in accordance with his artistic
+taste. Do&ntilde;a Emilia would remain in Madrid with one of her sons, who had
+been promoted to a position in the Foreign Office. Everybody, even the
+mother, was in the young couple's way. And Do&ntilde;a Emilia wiped away an
+invisible tear with the tip of her glove. Besides, she did not care to
+go back to the countries where she had been <i>somebody</i>; she preferred to
+stay in Madrid; there people knew her at least.</p>
+
+<p>The wedding was an event. Not a soul in the huge family was absent; all
+feared the annoying questions of the illustrious widow who kept a list
+of relatives to the sixth remove.</p>
+
+<p>Se&ntilde;or Ant&oacute;n arrived two days before, in a new suit with knee-breeches
+and a broad plush hat, looking somewhat confused at the smiles of those
+people who regarded him as a quaint type. Crestfallen and trembling in
+the presence of the two women, with a countryman's respect, he called
+his daughter-in-law "Se&ntilde;orita."</p>
+
+<p>"No, papa, call me 'daughter.' Say Josephina to me."</p>
+
+<p>But in spite of Josephina's simplicity and the tender gratitude he felt
+when he saw her look at his son with such loving eyes, he did not
+venture to take the liberty of speaking to her as his child and made the
+greatest efforts to avoid this danger, always speaking to her in the
+third person.</p>
+
+<p>Do&ntilde;a Emilia, with her gold glasses and her majestic bearing, caused him
+even greater emotion. He always called her "Se&ntilde;ora marquesa," for in his
+simplicity he could not admit that that lady was not at least a
+marchioness. The widow, somewhat disarmed by the good man's homage,
+admitted that he was a "rube" of some natural talent, a fact that made
+her tolerate the ridiculous note of his knee breeches.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the chapel of the Marquis of Tarfe's palace, after looking
+dumbfounded at the great throng of nobility that had gathered for his
+son's wedding, the old man, standing in the doorway, began to cry:</p>
+
+<p>"Now I can die, O Lord. Now I can die!"</p>
+
+<p>And he repeated his sad desire, without noticing the laughter of the
+servants, as if, after a life of toil, happiness were the inevitable
+forerunner of death.</p>
+
+<p>The bride and groom started on their trip the same day. Se&ntilde;or Ant&oacute;n for
+the first time kissed his daughter-in-law on the forehead, moistening it
+with his tears, and went home to his village, still repeating his
+longing for death, as though nothing were left in the world for him to
+hope for.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales and his wife reached Rome after several stops on the way.
+Their short stay in various cities of the Riviera, the days in Pisa and
+Florence, though delightful, as keeping the memory of their first
+intimacy, seemed unspeakably vulgar, when they were installed in their
+little house in Rome. There the real honeymoon began, by their own
+fireside, free from all intrusion, far from the confusion of hotels.</p>
+
+<p>Josephina, accustomed to a life of secret privation, to the misery of
+that fourth-floor apartment in which she and her mother lived as though
+they were camping out, keeping all their show for the street, admired
+the coquettish charm, the smart daintiness of the house in the Via
+Margutta. Mariano's friend, who had charge of the furnishing of the
+house, a certain Pepe Cotoner, who hardly ever touched his brushes and
+who devoted all his artistic enthusiasm to his worship of Renovales, had
+certainly done things well.</p>
+
+<p>Josephina clapped her hands in childish joy when she saw the bedroom,
+admiring its sumptuous Venetian furniture, with its wonderful inlaid
+pearl and ebony, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> princely luxury that the painter would have to pay
+for in instalments.</p>
+
+<p>Oh! The first night of their stay in Rome! How well Renovales remembered
+it! Josephina, lying on the monumental bed, made for the wife of a Doge,
+shook with the delight of rest, stretching her limbs before she hid them
+under the fine sheets, showing herself with the abandon of a woman who
+no longer has any secrets to keep. The pink toes of her plump little
+feet moved as if they were calling Renovales.</p>
+
+<p>Standing beside the bed, he looked at her seriously, with his brows
+contracted, dominated by a desire that he hesitated to express. He
+wanted to see her, to admire her; he did not know her yet, after those
+nights in the hotels when they could hear strange voices on the other
+side of the thin walls.</p>
+
+<p>It was not the caprice of a lover, it was the desire of a painter, the
+demand of an artist. His eyes were hungry for beauty.</p>
+
+<p>She resisted, blushing, a trifle angry at this demand which offended her
+deepest prejudices.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't be foolish, Mariano, dear. Come to bed; don't talk nonsense."</p>
+
+<p>But he persisted obstinately in his desire. She must overcome her
+bourgeois scruples, art scoffed at such modesty, human beauty was meant
+to be shown in all its radiant majesty and not to be kept hidden,
+despised and cursed.</p>
+
+<p>He did not want to paint her; he did not dare to ask for that; but he
+did want to see her, to see her and admire her, not with a coarse
+desire, but with religious adoration.</p>
+
+<p>And his hands, restrained by the fears of hurting her, gently pulled her
+weak arms that were crossed on her breast in the endeavor to resist his
+advances. She<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span> laughed: "You silly thing. You're tickling me&mdash;you're
+hurting me." But little by little, conquered by his persistency, her
+feminine pride flattered by this worship of her body, she gave in to
+him, allowed herself to be treated like a child, with soft remonstrances
+as if she were undergoing torture, but without resisting any longer.</p>
+
+<p>Her body, free from veils, shone with the whiteness of pearl. Josephina
+closed her eyes as if she wanted to flee from the shame of her
+nakedness. On the smooth sheet, her graceful form was outlined in a
+slightly rosy tone, intoxicating the eyes of the artist.</p>
+
+<p>Josephina's face was not much to look at, but her body! If he could only
+overcome her scruples some time and paint her!</p>
+
+<p>Renovales kneeled down beside the bed in a transport of admiration.</p>
+
+<p>"I worship you, Josephina. You are as fair as Venus. No, not Venus. She
+is cold and calm, like a goddess, and you are a woman. You are
+like&mdash;what are you like? Yes, now I see the likeness. You are Goya's
+little <i>Maja</i>, with her delicate grace, her fascinating daintiness. You
+are the <i>Maja Desnuda!</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III</h2>
+
+
+<p>Renovales' life was changed. In love with his wife, fearing that she
+might lack some comfort, and thinking with anxiety of the Torrealta
+widow, who might complain that the daughter of the "illustrious diplomat
+of imperishable memory" was not happy because she had lowered herself to
+the extent of marrying a painter, he worked incessantly to maintain with
+his brush the comforts with which he had surrounded Josephina.</p>
+
+<p>He, who had had so much scorn for industrial art, painting for money, as
+did his comrades, followed their example, but with the energy that he
+showed in all his undertakings. In some of the studios there were cries
+of protest against this tireless competitor who lowered prices
+scandalously. He had sold his brush for a year to one of those Jewish
+dealers who exported paintings at so much a picture, and under agreement
+not to paint for any other dealer. Renovales worked from morning till
+night changing subjects when it was demanded by what he called his
+<i>impresario</i>. "Enough <i>ciociari</i>, now for some Moors." Afterwards the
+Moors lost their market-value and the turn of the musketeers came,
+fencing a valiant duel; then pink shepherdesses in the style of Watteau
+or ladies in powdered wigs embarking in a golden gondola to the sound of
+lutes. To give freshness to his stock, he would interpolate a sacristy
+scene with much show of embroidered chasubles and golden incensaries, or
+an occasional bacchanalian, imitating from memory, without models,
+Titians' voluptuous forms and amber flesh. When the list was ended, the
+<i>ciociari</i> were once more in style<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> and could be begun again. The
+painter with his extraordinary facility of execution produced two or
+three pictures a week, and the <i>impresario</i>, to encourage him in his
+work, often visited him afternoons, following the movements of his brush
+with the enthusiasm of a man who appreciated art at so much a foot and
+so much an hour. The news he brought was of a sort to infuse new zest.</p>
+
+<p>The last bacchanal painted by Renovales was in a fashionable bar in New
+York. His pageant of the Abruzzi was in one of the noblest castles in
+Russia. Another picture, representing a dance of countesses disguised as
+shepherdesses in a field of violets, was in the possession of a Jewish
+baron, a banker in Frankfort. The dealer rubbed his hands, as he spoke
+to the painter with a patronizing air. His name was becoming famous,
+thanks to him, and he would not step until he had won him a world-wide
+reputation. Already his agents were asking him to send nothing but the
+works of Signor Renovales, for they were the best sellers. But Mariano
+answered him with a sudden outburst of bitterness. All those canvases
+were mere rot. If that was art, he would prefer to break stone on the
+high roads.</p>
+
+<p>But his rebellion against this debasement of his art disappeared when he
+saw his Josephina in the house whose ornamentation he was constantly
+improving, converting it into a jewel case worthy of his love. She was
+happy in her home, with a splendid carriage in which to drive every
+afternoon and perfect freedom to spend money on her clothes and jewelry.
+Renovales' wife lacked nothing; she had-at her disposal, as adviser and
+errand-boy, Cotoner, who spent the night in a garret that served him as
+a studio in one of the cheap districts and the rest of the day with the
+young couple. She was mistress of the money; she had never seen so many
+banknotes at once. When Renovales handed her the pile of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> lires which
+the impresario gave him she said with a little laugh of joy, "Money,
+money!" and ran and hid it away with the serious expression of a
+diligent, economical housewife&mdash;only to take it out the next day and
+squander it with a childish carelessness. What a wonderful thing
+painting was! Her illustrious father (in spite of all that her mother
+said) had never made so much money in all his travels through the world,
+going from cotillon to cotillon as the representative of his king.</p>
+
+<p>While Renovales was in the studio, she had been to drive in the Pincio,
+bowing from her landau to the countless wives of ambassadors who were
+stationed at Rome, to aristocratic travelers stopping in the city, to
+whom she had been introduced in some drawing-room, and to all the crowd
+of diplomatic attach&eacute;s who live about the double court of the Vatican
+and the Quirinal.</p>
+
+<p>The painter was introduced by his wife into an official society of the
+most rigid formality. The niece of the Marquis of Tarfe, perpetual
+foreign minister, was received with open arms by the high society of
+Rome, the most exclusive in Europe. At every reception at the two
+Spanish embassies, "the famous painter Renovales and his charming wife"
+were present and these invitations had spread to the embassies of other
+countries. Almost every night there was some function. Since there were
+two diplomatic centers, one at the court of the Italian king, the other
+at the Vatican, the receptions and evening parties were frequent in this
+isolated society that gathered every night, sufficient for its own
+enjoyment.</p>
+
+<p>When Renovales got home at dark, tired out with his work, he would find
+Josephina, already half dressed, waiting for him, and Cotoner helped him
+to put on his evening clothes.</p>
+
+<p>"The cross!" exclaimed Josephina, when she saw him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> with his dress-coat
+on. "Why, man alive, how did you happen to forget your cross? You know
+that they all wear something there."</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner went for the insignia, a great cross the Spanish government had
+given him for his picture, and the artist, with the ribbon across his
+shirt-front and a brilliant circle on his coat, started out with his
+wife to spend the evening among diplomats, distinguished travelers and
+cardinals' nephews.</p>
+
+<p>The other painters were furious with envy when they learned how often
+the Spanish ambassador and his wife, the consul and prominent people
+connected with the Vatican visited his studio. They denied his talent,
+attributing these distinctions to Josephina's position. They called him
+a courtier and a flatterer, alleging that he had married to better his
+position. One of his most constant visitors was Father Recovero, the
+representative of a monastic order that was powerful in Spain, a sort of
+cowled ambassador who enjoyed great influence with the Pope. When he was
+not in Renovales' studio, the latter was sure that he was at his house,
+doing some favor for Josephina who felt proud of her friendship with
+this influential friar, so jovial and scrupulously correct in spite of
+his coarse clothes. Renovales' wife always had some favor to ask of him,
+her friends in Madrid were unceasing in their requests.</p>
+
+<p>The Torrealta widow contributed to this by her constant chatter among
+her acquaintances about the high position her daughter occupied in Rome.
+According to her, Mariano was making millions; Josephina was reported to
+be a great friend of the Pope, her house was full of Cardinals and if
+the Pope did not visit her it was only because the poor thing was a
+prisoner in the Vatican. And so the painter's wife had to keep sending
+to Madrid some rosary that had been passed over St. Peter's tomb<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> or
+reliques taken from the Catacombs. She urged Father Recovero to
+negotiate difficult marriage dispensations and interested herself in
+behalf of the petitions of pious ladies, friends of her mother. The
+great festivals of the Roman Church filled her with enthusiasm because
+of their theatrical interest and she was very grateful to the generous
+friar who never forgot to reserve her a good place. There never was a
+reception of pilgrims in Saint Peter's with a triumphal march of the
+Pope carried on a platform amid feather fans, at which Josephina was not
+present. At other times the good Father made the mysterious announcement
+that on the next day Pallestri, the famous male soprano of the papal
+chapel, was going to sing; the Spanish lady got up early, leaving her
+husband still in bed, to hear the sweet voice of the pontifical eunuch
+whose beardless face appeared in shop windows among the portraits of
+dancers and fashionable tenors.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales laughed good-naturedly at the countless occupations and futile
+entertainments of his wife. Poor girl, she must enjoy herself; that was
+what he was working for. He was sorry enough that he could go with her
+only in her evening diversions. During the day he entrusted her to his
+faithful Cotoner who attended her like an old family servant, carrying
+her bundles when she went shopping, performing the duties of butler and
+sometimes of chef.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales had made his acquaintance when he came to Rome. He was his
+best friend. Ten years his senior, Cotoner showed the worship of a pupil
+and the affections of an older brother for the young artist. Everyone in
+Rome knew him, laughing at his pictures on the rare occasions when he
+painted, and appreciated his accommodating nature that to some extent
+dignified his parasite's existence. Short, rotund, bald-headed,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> with
+projecting ears and the ugliness of a good-natured, merry satyr, Signor
+Cotoner, when summer came, always found refuge in the castle of some
+cardinal in the Roman Campagna. During the winter he was a familiar
+sight in the Corso, wrapped in his greenish mackintosh, the sleeves of
+which waved like a bat's wings. He had begun in his own province as a
+landscape painter but he wanted to paint figures, to equal the masters,
+and so he landed in Rome in the company of the bishop of his diocese who
+looked on him as an honor to the church. He never moved from the city.
+His progress was remarkable. He knew the names and histories of all the
+artists, no one could compare with him in his ability to live
+economically in Rome and to find where things were cheapest. If a
+Spaniard went through the great city, he never missed visiting him. The
+children of celebrated painters looked on him as a sort of nurse, for he
+had put them all to sleep in his arms. The great triumph of his life was
+having figured in the cavalcade of the Quixote as Sancho Panza. He
+always painted the same picture, portraits of the Pope in three
+different sizes, piling them up in the attic that served him for a
+studio and bedroom. His friends, the cardinals whom he visited
+frequently, took pity on "Poor Signor Cotoner" and for a few lire bought
+a picture of the Pontiff horribly ugly, to present it to some village
+church where it would arouse great admiration since it came from Rome
+and was by a painter who was a friend of His Eminence.</p>
+
+<p>These purchases were a ray of joy for Cotoner, who came to Renovales'
+studio with his head up and wearing a smile of affected modesty.</p>
+
+<p>"I have made a sale, my boy. A pope; a large one, two meter size."</p>
+
+<p>And with a sudden burst of confidence in his talent,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> he talked of the
+future. Other men desired medals, triumphs in the exhibitions; he was
+more modest. He would be satisfied if he could guess who would be Pope
+when the present Pope died, in order to be able to paint up pictures of
+him by the dozen ahead of time. What a triumph to put the goods on the
+market the day after the Conclave! A perfect fortune! And well
+acquainted with all the cardinals, he passed the Sacred College in
+mental review with the persistency of a gambler in a lottery, hesitating
+between the half dozen who aspired to the tiara. He lived like a
+parasite among the high functionaries of the Church, but he was
+indifferent to religion, as if this association with them had taken away
+all his belief. The old man clad in white and the other red gentlemen
+inspired respect in him because they were rich and served indirectly his
+wretched portrait business. His admiration was wholly devoted to
+Renovales. In the studio of other artists he received their irritating
+jests with his usual calm smile of affability, but they could not speak
+ill of Renovales nor discuss his ability. To his mind, Renovales could
+produce nothing but masterpieces and in his blind admiration he even
+went so far as to rave naively over the easel pictures he painted for
+his impresario.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes Josephina unexpectedly appeared in her husband's studio and
+chatted with him while he painted, praising the canvases that had a
+pretty subject. She preferred to find him alone in these visits,
+painting from his fancy without any other model than some clothes placed
+on a manikin. She felt a sort of aversion to models, and Renovales tried
+in vain to convince her of the necessity of using them. He had talent to
+paint beautiful things without resorting to the assistance of those
+ordinary old men and above all, of those women with their disheveled
+hair, their flashing eyes and their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> wolfish teeth, who, in the solitude
+and silence of the studio, actually terrified her. Renovales laughed.
+What nonsense! Jealous little girl! As if he were capable of thinking of
+anything but art with a palette in his hand!</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon, when Josephina suddenly came into the studio she saw on
+the model's platform a naked woman, lying in some furs, showing the
+curves of her yellow back. The wife compressed her lips and pretended
+not to see her, listened to Renovales with a distracted air, as he
+explained this innovation. He was painting a bacchanal and it was
+impossible for him to proceed without a model. It was a case of
+necessity, flesh could not be done from memory. The model, at ease
+before the painter, felt ashamed of her nakedness in the presence of
+that fashionable lady, and after wrapping herself up in the furs, hid
+behind a screen and hastily dressed herself.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales recovered his serenity when he reached home, seeing that his
+wife received him with her customary eagerness, as if she had forgotten
+her displeasure of the afternoon. She laughed at Cotoner's stories;
+after dinner they went to the theater and when bedtime came, the painter
+had forgotten about the surprise in the studio. He was falling asleep
+when he was alarmed by a painful, prolonged sigh, as if some one were
+stifling beside him. When he lit the light he saw Josephina with both
+fists in her eyes, crying, her breast heaving with sobs, and kicking in
+a childish fit of temper till the bed-clothes were rolled in a ball and
+the exquisite puff fell to the floor.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't, I won't," she moaned with an accent of protest.</p>
+
+<p>The painter had jumped out of bed, full of anxiety, going from one side
+to the other without knowing what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> to do, trying to pull her hands away
+from her eyes, giving in, in spite of his strength, to Josephina's
+efforts to free herself from him.</p>
+
+<p>"But what's the matter? What is it you won't do? What's happened to
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>And she continued to cry, tossing about in the bed, kicking in a nervous
+fury.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me alone! I don't like you; don't touch me. I won't let you, no,
+sir, I won't let you. I'm going away. I'm going home to my mother."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales, terrified at the fury of the little woman who was always so
+gentle, did not know what to do to calm her. He ran through the bedroom
+and the adjoining dressing room in his night shirt, that showed his
+athletic muscles; he offered her water, going so far as to pick up the
+bottles of perfumes in his confusion as if they could serve him as
+sedatives, and finally he knelt down, trying to kiss the clenched little
+hands that thrust him away, catching at his hair and beard.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me alone. I tell you to let me alone. I know you don't love me. I'm
+going away."</p>
+
+<p>The painter was surprised and afraid of the nervousness in this beloved
+little doll; he did not dare to touch her for fear of hurting her. As
+soon as the sun rose she would leave that house forever. Her husband did
+not love her. No one but her mother cared for her. He was making her a
+laughing stock before people. And all these incoherent complaints that
+did not explain the motive for her anger, continued for a long time
+until the artist guessed the cause. Was it the model, the naked woman?
+Yes, that was it; she would not consent to it, that in a studio that was
+practically her house, low women should show themselves immodestly to
+her husband's eyes. And as she protested against such abominations, her
+twitching fingers tore the front of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> her night dress, showing the hidden
+charms that filled Renovales with such enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>The painter, tired out by this scene, enervated by the cries and tears
+of his wife, could not help laughing when he discovered the motive of
+her irritation.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! So it's all on account of the model. Be quiet, girl, no woman shall
+come into the studio."</p>
+
+<p>And he promised everything Josephina wished, in order to be over with it
+as soon as possible. When it was dark once more, she was still sighing,
+but now it was in her husband's strong arms with her head resting on his
+breast, lisping like a grieved child that tries to justify the past fit
+of temper. It did not cost Mariano anything to do her this favor. She
+loved him dearly, so dearly, and she would love him still more if he
+respected her prejudices. He might call her bourgeois, a common ordinary
+soul, but that was what she wanted to be, just as she always had been.
+Besides, what was the need of painting naked women? Couldn't he do other
+things? She urged him to paint children in smocks and sandals, curly
+haired and chubby, like the child Jesus; old peasant women with
+wrinkled, copper-colored faces, bald-headed ancients with long beards;
+character studies, but no young women, understand? No naked beauties!
+Renovales said "yes" to everything, drawing close to him that beloved
+form still trembling with its past rage. They clung to each other with a
+sort of anxiety, desirous of forgetting what had happened, and the night
+ended peacefully for Renovales in the happiness of reconciliation.</p>
+
+<p>When summer came they rented a little villa at Castel-Gandolfo. Cotoner
+had gone to Rivoli in the train of a cardinal and the married couple
+lived in the country accompanied only by a couple of maids and a
+manservant, who took care of Renovales' painting kit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Josephina was perfectly contented in this retirement, far from Rome,
+talking with her husband at all hours, free from the anxiety that filled
+her, when he was working in his studio. For a month Renovales remained
+in placid idleness. His art seemed forgotten; the boxes of paints, the
+easels, all the artistic luggage brought from Rome, remained packed up
+and forgotten in a shed in the garden. Afternoons they took long walks,
+returning home at nightfall slowly, with their arms around each other's
+waists, watching the strip of pale gold in the western sky, breaking the
+rural silence with one of the sweet, passionate romances that came from
+Naples. Now that they were alone in the intimacy of a life without cares
+or friendships, the enthusiastic love of the first days of their married
+life reawakened. But the "demon of painting" was not long in spreading
+over him his invisible wings, which seemed to scatter an irresistible
+enchantment. He became bored at the long hours in the bright sun, yawned
+in his wicker chair, smoking pipe after pipe, not knowing what to talk
+about. Josephina, on her part, tried to drive away the ennui by reading
+some English novel of aristocratic life, tiresome and moral, to which
+she had taken a great liking in her school girl days.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales began to work again. His servant brought out his artist's kit
+and he took up his palette as enthusiastically as a beginner, and
+painted for himself with a religious fervor as if he thought to purify
+himself from that base submission to the commissions of a dealer.</p>
+
+<p>He studied Nature directly; painted delightful bits of landscapes,
+tanned and repulsive heads that breathed the selfish brutality of the
+peasant. But this artistic activity did not seem to satisfy him. His
+life of increased intimacy with Josephina aroused in him mysterious
+longings that he hardly dared to formulate.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> Mornings when his wife,
+fresh and rosy from her bath, appeared before him almost naked, he
+looked at her with greedy eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if you were only willing! If you didn't have that foolish prejudice
+of yours!"</p>
+
+<p>And his exclamations made her smile, for her feminine vanity was
+flattered by this worship. Renovales regretted that his artistic talent
+had to go in search of beautiful things when the supreme, definitive
+work was at his side. He told her about Rubens, the great master, who
+surrounded El&egrave;ne Froment with the luxury of a princess, and of her who
+felt no objection to freeing her fresh, mythological beauty from veils
+in order to serve as a model for her husband. Renovales praised the
+Flemish woman. Artists formed a family by themselves; morality and the
+popular prejudices were meant for other people. They lived under the
+jurisdiction of Beauty, regarding as natural what other people looked on
+as a sin.</p>
+
+<p>Josephina protested against her husband's wishes with a playful
+indignation but she allowed him to admire her. Her abandon increased
+every day. Mornings, when she got up, she remained undressed longer,
+prolonging her toilette while the artist walked around her, praising her
+various beauties. "That is Rubens, pure and simple, that's Titian's
+color. Look, little girl, lift up your arms, like this. Oh, you are the
+<i>Maja</i>, Goya's little <i>Maja</i>." And she submitted to him with a gracious
+pout, as if she relished the expression of worship and disappointment
+which her husband wore at possessing her as a woman and not possessing
+her as a model.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon when a scorching wind seemed to stifle the countryside
+with its breath, Josephina capitulated. They were in their room, with
+the windows<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> closed, trying to escape the terrible sirocco by shutting
+it out and putting on thin clothes. She did not want to see her husband
+with such a gloomy face nor listen to his complaints. As long as he was
+crazy and was set on his whim, she did not dare to oppose him. He could
+paint her; but only a study, not a picture. When he was tired of
+reproducing her flesh on the canvas they would destroy it,&mdash;just as if
+he had done nothing.</p>
+
+<p>The painter said "yes" to everything, eager to have his brush in hand as
+soon as possible, before the beauty he craved. For three days he worked
+with a mad fever, with his eyes unnaturally wide open, as if he meant to
+devour the graceful outlines with his sight. Josephina, accustomed now
+to being naked, posed with unconscious abandon, with that feminine
+shamelessness which hesitates only at the first step. Oppressed by the
+heat, she slept while her husband kept on painting.</p>
+
+<p>When the work was finished, Josephina could not help admiring it. "How
+clever you are! But am I really like that, so pretty?" Mariano showed
+his satisfaction. It was his masterpiece, his best. Perhaps in all his
+life he might never find another moment like that, of prodigious mental
+intensity, what people commonly call inspiration. She continued to
+admire herself in the canvas, just as she did some mornings in the great
+mirror in the bedroom. She praised the various parts of her beauty with
+frank immodesty. Dazzled by the beauty of her body she did not notice
+the face, that seemed unimportant, lost in soft veils. When her eyes
+fell on it she showed a sort of disappointment.</p>
+
+<p>"It doesn't look much like me! It isn't my face!"</p>
+
+<p>The artist smiled. It was not she; he had tried to disguise her face,
+nothing but her face. It was a mask, a concession to social conventions.
+As it was, no one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> would recognize her and his work, his great work,
+might appear and receive the admiration of the world.</p>
+
+<p>"Because, we aren't going to destroy it," Renovales continued with a
+tremble in his voice, "that would be a crime. Never in my life will I be
+able to do anything like it again. We won't destroy it, will we, little
+girl?"</p>
+
+<p>The little girl remained silent for a good while with her gaze fixed on
+the picture. Renovales' eager eyes saw a cloud slowly rise over her
+face, like a shadow on a white wall. The painter felt as though the
+floor were sinking under his feet; the storm was coming. Josephina
+turned pale, two tears slipped slowly down her cheeks, two others took
+their places to fall with them and then more and more.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't! I won't!"</p>
+
+<p>It was the same hoarse, nervous, despotic cry that had set his hair on
+end with anxiety and fear that night in Rome. The little woman looked
+with hatred at the naked body that radiated its pearly light from the
+depths of the canvas. She seemed to feel the terror of a sleep-walker
+who suddenly awakens in the midst of a square surrounded by a thousand
+curious, eager eyes and in her fright does not know what to do nor where
+to flee. How could she have assented to such a disgraceful thing?</p>
+
+<p>"I won't have it!" she cried angrily. "Destroy it, Mariano, destroy it."</p>
+
+<p>But Mariano seemed on the point of weeping too. Destroy it! Who could
+demand such a foolish thing? That figure was not she; no one would
+recognize her. What was the use of depriving him of a signal triumph?
+But his wife did not listen to him. She was rolling on the floor with
+the same convulsions and moans as on the night of the stormy scene, her
+hands were clenched<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> like a crook, her feet kicked like a dying lamb's
+and her mouth, painfully distorted, kept crying hoarsely:</p>
+
+<p>"I won't have it! I won't have it! Destroy it!"</p>
+
+<p>She complained of her lot with a violence that wounded Renovales. She, a
+respectable woman, submitted to that degradation as if she were a street
+walker. If she had only known! How was she going to imagine that her
+husband would make such abominable proposals to her!</p>
+
+<p>Renovales, offended at these insults, at these lashes which her shrill,
+piercing voice dealt his artistic talent, left his wife, let her roll on
+the floor and with clenched fists, went from one end of the room to the
+other, looking at the ceiling, muttering all the oaths, Spanish and
+Italian, that were in current use in his studio.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he stood still, rooted to the floor by terror and surprise.
+Josephina, still naked, had jumped on the picture with the quickness of
+a wild cat. With the first stroke of her finger nails, she scratched the
+canvas from top to bottom, mingling the colors that were still soft,
+tearing off the thin shell of the dry parts. Then she caught up the
+little knife from the paint box and&mdash;rip! the canvas gave a long moan,
+parted under the thrust of that white arm which seemed to have a bluish
+cast in the violence of her wrath.</p>
+
+<p>He did not move. For a moment he felt indignant, tempted to throw
+himself on her but he lapsed into a childish weakness, ready to cry, to
+take refuge in a corner, to hide his weak, aching head. She, blind with
+wrath, continued to vent her fury on the picture, tangling her feet in
+the wood of the frame, tearing off pieces of canvas, walking back and
+forth with her prey like a wild beast. The artist had leaned his head
+against the wall, his strong breast shook with cowardly sobs.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To the almost fatherly grief at the loss of his work was added the
+bitterness of disappointment. For the first time he foresaw what his
+life was going to be. What a mistake he had made in marrying that girl
+who admired his art as a profession, as a means of making money, and who
+was trying to mold him to the prejudices and scruples of the circle in
+which she was born! He loved her in spite of this and he was certain
+that she did not love him less, but, still, perhaps it would have been
+better to remain alone, free for his art and, in case a companion was
+necessary, to find a fair maid of all work with all the splendor and
+intellectual humility of a beautiful animal that would admire and obey
+her master blindly.</p>
+
+<p>Three days passed in which the painter and his wife hardly spoke to each
+other. They looked at each other askance, humbled and broken by this
+domestic trouble. But the solitude in which they lived, the necessity of
+remaining together made the reconciliation imperative. She was the first
+to speak, as if she were terrified by the sadness and dejection of that
+huge giant who wandered about as peevish as a sick man. She threw her
+arms around him, kissed his forehead, made a thousand gracious efforts
+to bring a faint smile to his face. "Who loved him? His Josephina. His
+<i>Maja</i> but not his <i>Maja Desnuda;</i> that was over forever. He must never
+think of those horrible things. A decent painter does not think of them.
+What would all her friends say? There were many pretty things to paint
+in the world. They must live in each other's love, without his
+displeasing her with his hateful whims. His affection for the nude was a
+shameful remnant of his Bohemian days."</p>
+
+<p>And Renovales, won over by his wife's petting, made peace,&mdash;tried to
+forget his work and smiled with the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> resignation of a slave who loves
+his chain because it assures him peace and life.</p>
+
+<p>They returned to Rome at the beginning of the fall. Renovales began his
+work for the contractor, but after a few months the latter seemed
+dissatisfied. Not that Signor Mariano was losing power, not at all, but
+his agents complained of a certain monotony in the subjects of his
+works. The dealer advised him to travel; he might stay awhile in Umbria,
+painting peasants in ascetic landscapes, or old churches; he might&mdash;and
+this was the best thing to do&mdash;move to Venice. How much Signor Mariano
+could accomplish in those canals! And it was thus that the idea of
+leaving Rome first came to the painter.</p>
+
+<p>Josephina did not object. That daily round of receptions in the
+countless embassies and legations was beginning to bore her. Now that
+the charm of the first impressions had disappeared, Josephina noticed
+that the great ladies treated her with an annoying condescension as if
+she had descended from her rank in marrying an artist. Besides, the
+younger men in the embassies, the attach&eacute;s of different nationalities,
+some light, some dark, who sought relief from their celibacy without
+going outside diplomatic society, were disgracefully impudent as they
+danced with her or went through the figures of a cotillion, as if they
+considered her an easy conquest, seeing her married to an artist who
+could not display an ugly uniform in the drawing rooms. They made
+cynical declarations to her in English or German and she had to keep her
+temper, smiling and biting her lips, close to Renovales, who did not
+understand a word and showed his satisfaction at the attentions of which
+his wife was the object on the part of the fashionable youths whose
+manners he tried to imitate.</p>
+
+<p>The trip was decided on. They would go to Venice!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> Their friend Cotoner
+said "Good-by," he was sorry to part from them but his place was in
+Rome. The Pope was ailing just at that time and the painter, in the hope
+of his death, was preparing canvases of all sizes, striving to guess who
+would be his successor.</p>
+
+<p>As he went back in his memories, Renovales always thought of his life in
+Venice with a sort of pleasant homesickness. It was the best period of
+his life. The enchanting city of the lagoons,&mdash;bathed in golden light,
+lulled by the lapping of the water, fascinated him from the first
+moment, making him forget his love for the human form. For some time his
+enthusiasm for the nude was calmed. He worshiped the old palaces, the
+solitary canals, the lagoon with its green, motionless waiter, the soul
+of a majestic past, which seemed to breathe in the solemn old age of the
+dead, eternally smiling city.</p>
+
+<p>They lived in the Foscarini palace, a huge building with red walls and
+casements of white stone that opened on a little alley of water
+adjoining the Grand Canal. It was the former abode of merchants,
+navigators and conquerors of the Isles of the East who in times gone by
+had worn on their heads the golden horn of the Doges. The modern spirit,
+utilitarian and irreverent, had converted the palace into a tenement,
+dividing gilded drawing rooms with ugly partitions, establishing
+kitchens in the filigreed arcades of the seignorial court, filling the
+marble galleries to which the centuries gave the amber-like transparency
+of old ivory, with clothes hung out to dry and replacing the gaps in the
+superb mosaic with cheap square tiles.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales and his wife occupied the apartment nearest the Grand Canal.
+Mornings, Josephina saw from a bay window the rapid silent approach of
+her husband's gondola. The gondolier, accustomed to the service of
+artists, shouted to the painter, till Renovales came down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> with his box
+of water-colors and the boat started immediately through the narrow,
+winding canals, moving the silvered comb of its prow from one side to
+the other as if it were feeling the way. What mornings of placid silence
+in the sleeping water of an alley, between two palaces whose boldly
+projecting roofs kept the surface of the little canal in perpetual
+shadow! The gondolier slept stretched out in one of the curving ends of
+his boat and Renovales, sitting beside the black canopy, painted his
+Venetian water-colors, a new type that his impresario in Rome received
+with the greatest enthusiasm. His deftness enabled him to produce these
+works with as much facility as if they were mechanical copies. In the
+maze of canals he had one of his own which he called his "estate" on
+account of the money it netted him. He had painted again and again its
+dead, silent waters which all day long were never rippled except by his
+gondola; two old palaces with broken blinds, the doors covered with the
+crust of years, stairways rotted with mold and in the background a
+little arch of light, a marble bridge and under it the life, the
+movement, the sun of a broad, busy canal. The neglected little alley
+came to life every week under Renovales' brush&mdash;he could paint it with
+his eyes shut&mdash;and the business initiative of the Roman Jew scattered it
+through the world.</p>
+
+<p>The afternoons Mariano passed with his wife. Sometimes they went in a
+gondola to the promenade of the Lido and sitting on the sandy beach,
+watched the angry surface of the open Adriatic, that stretched its
+tossing white caps to the horizon, like a flock of snowy sheep hurrying
+in the rush of a panic.</p>
+
+<p>Other afternoons they walked in the Square of Saint Mark, under the
+arcades of its three rows of palaces where they could see in the
+background, by the last rays<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> of the sun, the pale gold of the basilica
+gleaming, as if in its walls and domes there were crystallized all the
+wealth of the ancient Republic.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales, with his wife on his arm, walked calmly as if the majesty of
+the place impelled him to a sort of noble bearing. The august silence
+was not disturbed by the deafening hubbub of other great capitals; no
+rattling of carts or footsteps of horses or hucksters' cries. The
+Square, with its white marble pavement, was a huge drawing room through
+which the visitors passed as if they were making a call. The musicians
+of the Venice band were gathered in the center with their hats
+surmounted by black waving plumes. The blasts of the Wagnerian brasses,
+galloping in the mad ride of the Valkyries, made the marble columns
+shake and seemed to give life to the four golden horses that reared over
+space with silent whinnies on the cornice of St. Mark's.</p>
+
+<p>The dark-feathered doves of Venice scattered in playful spirals,
+somewhat frightened at the music, finally settled, like rain, on the
+tables of the caf&eacute;. Then, taking flight again, they blackened the roof
+of the palaces and once more swooped down like a mantle of metallic
+luster on the groups of English tourists in green veils and round hats,
+who called them in order to offer them grain.</p>
+
+<p>Josephina, with childish eagerness, left her husband in order to buy a
+cone full of grain, and spreading it out in her gloved hands she
+gathered the wards of St. Mark around her; they rested on the flowers of
+her head, fluttering like fantastic crests, they hopped on her
+shoulders, or lined up on her outstretched arms, they clung desperately
+to her slight hips, trying to walk around her waist, and others, more
+daring, as if possessed of human mischievousness, scratched her breast,
+reached out their beaks striving to caress her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> ruddy, half-opened, lips
+through the veil. She laughed, trembling at the tickling of the animated
+cloud that rubbed against her body. Her husband watched her, laughing
+too, and certain that no one but she would understand him, he called to
+her in Spanish.</p>
+
+<p>"My, but you are beautiful! I wish I could paint your picture! If it
+weren't for the people, I would kiss you."</p>
+
+<p>Venice was the scene of her happiest days. She lived quietly while her
+husband worked, taking odd corners of the city for his models. When he
+left the house, her placid calm was not disturbed by any troublesome
+thought. This was painting, she was sure,&mdash;and not the conditions of
+affairs in Rome, where he would shut himself up with shameless women who
+were not afraid to pose stark naked. She loved him with a renewed
+passion, she petted him with constant caresses. It was then that her
+daughter was born, their only child.</p>
+
+<p>Majestic Do&ntilde;a Emilia could not remain in Madrid when she learned that
+she was going to be a grandmother. Her poor Josephina, in a foreign
+land, with no one to take care of her but her husband, who had some
+talent according to what people said, but who seemed to her rather
+ordinary! At her son-in-law's expense, she made the trip to Venice and
+there she stayed for several months, fuming against the city, which she
+had never visited in her diplomatic travels. The distinguished lady
+considered that no cities were inhabitable except the capitals that have
+a court. Pshaw! Venice! A shabby town that no one liked but writers of
+romanzas and decorators of fans, and where there were nothing higher
+than consuls. She liked Rome with its Pope and kings. Besides, it made
+her seasick to ride in the gondolas and she complained constantly of the
+rheumatism, blaming it to the dampness of the lagoons.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Renovales, who had feared for Josephina's life, believing that her weak,
+delicate constitution could not stand the shock, broke out into cries of
+joy when he received the little one in his arms and looked at the mother
+with her head resting on the pillow as if she were dead. Her white face
+was hardly outlined against the white of the linen. His first thought
+was for her, for the pale features, distorted by the recent crisis,
+which gradually were growing calmer with rest. Poor little girl! How she
+had suffered! But as he tip-toed out of the bed room in order not to
+disturb the heavy sleep that, after two cruel days, had overpowered the
+sick woman, he gave himself up to his admiration for the bit of flesh
+that lay in the huge flabby arms of the grandmother, wrapped in fine
+linen. Ah, what a dear little thing! He looked at the livid little face,
+the big head, thinly covered with hair, seeking for some suggestion of
+himself in this surge of flesh that was in motion and still without
+definite form. "Mamma, whom does she look like?"</p>
+
+<p>Do&ntilde;a Emilia was surprised at his blindness. Whom; should she look like?
+Like him, no one but him. She was large, enormous; she had seen few
+babies as large as this one. It did not seem possible that her poor
+daughter could live after giving birth to "that." They could not
+complain that she was not healthy; she was as ruddy as a country baby.</p>
+
+<p>"She's a Renovales; she's yours, wholly yours, Mariano. We belong to a
+different class."</p>
+
+<p>And Renovales, without noticing his mother's words, saw only that his
+daughter was like him, overjoyed to see how robust she was, shouting his
+pleasure at the health of which the grandmother spoke in a disappointed
+tone.</p>
+
+<p>In vain did he and Do&ntilde;a Emilia try to dissuade Jo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>sephina from nursing
+the baby. The little woman, in spite of the weakness that kept her
+motionless in bed, wept and cried almost as she had in the crises that
+had so terrified Renovales.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't have it," she said with that obstinacy that made her so
+terrible.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't have a strange woman's milk for my daughter. I will nurse her,
+her mother."</p>
+
+<p>And they had to give the baby to her.</p>
+
+<p>When Josephina seemed recovered, her mother, feeling that her mission
+was over, went home to Madrid. She was bored to death in that silent
+city of Venice, night after night she thought she was dead, for she
+could not hear a single sound from her bed. The calm, interrupted now
+and then by the shouts of the gondoliers filled her with the same terror
+that she felt in a cemetery. She had no friends, she did not "shine";
+there was nobody in that dirty hole and nobody knew her. She was always
+recalling her distinguished friends in Madrid where she thought she was
+an indispensable personage. The modesty of her granddaughter's
+christening left a deep impression in her mind in spite of the fact that
+they gave her name to the child; an insignificant little party that
+needed only two gondolas; she, who was the godmother, with the
+godfather, an old Venetian painter, who was a friend of Renovales and,
+besides, Renovales himself and two artists, a Frenchman and another
+Spaniard. The Patriarch of Venice did not officiate at the baptism, not
+even a bishop. And she knew so many of them at home. A mere priest, who
+was in a shameful hurry, had been sufficient to christen the
+granddaughter of the famous diplomat, in a little church, as the sun was
+setting. She went away repeating once more that Josephina was killing
+herself, that it was perfect folly for her to nurse the baby in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span> her
+delicate condition, regretting that she did not follow the example of
+her mother who had always intrusted her children to nurses.</p>
+
+<p>Josephina cried bitterly when her mother went, but Renovales said
+"good-by" with ill-concealed joy. <i>Bon voyage</i>! He simply could not
+endure the woman, always complaining that she was being neglected when
+she saw how her son-in-law was working to make her daughter happy. The
+only thing he agreed with her in was in scolding Josephina tenderly for
+her obstinacy in nursing the baby. Poor little <i>Maja Desnuda</i>! Her form
+had lost its bud-like daintiness in the full flower of motherhood.</p>
+
+<p>She appeared more robust, but the stoutness was accompanied by an anemic
+weakness. Her husband, seeing how she was losing her daintiness, loved
+her with more tender compassion. Poor little girl! How good she was! She
+was sacrificing herself for her daughter.</p>
+
+<p>When the baby was a year old, the great crisis in Renovales' life
+occurred. Desirous of taking a "bath in art," of knowing what was going
+on outside of the dungeon in which he was imprisoned, painting at so
+much a piece, he left Josephina in Venice and made a short trip to Paris
+to see its famous Salon. He came back transfigured, with a new fever for
+work and a determination to transform his existence which filled his
+wife with astonishment and fear. He was going to break with his
+<i>impresario</i>, he would no longer debase himself with that false
+painting, even if he had to beg for his living. Great things were being
+done in the world, and he felt that he had the courage to be an
+innovator, following the steps of those modern painters who made such a
+profound impression on him.</p>
+
+<p>Now he hated old Italy, where artists went to study under the protection
+of ignorant governments.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In reality what they found there was a market of tempting commissions
+where they soon grew accustomed to taking orders, to the luxurious,
+indifferent life of easy profit. He wanted to move to Paris. But
+Josephina, who listened to Renovales' fancies in silence, unable to
+understand them for the most part, modified this determination by her
+advice. She too wanted to leave Venice. The city seemed gloomy in the
+winter with its ceaseless rains that left the bridges slippery and the
+marble alleys impassable. Since they were determined to break up camp,
+why not go back to Madrid? Mamma was sick, she complained in all her
+letters at living so far from her daughter. Josephina wanted to see her,
+she had a presentiment that her mother was going to die. Renovales
+thought it over; he too wanted to go back to Spain. He felt homesick;
+he thought of the great stir he would cause there, teaching his new
+methods amid the general routine. The desire of shocking the
+Academicians, who had accepted him before because he had renounced his
+ideals, tempted him.</p>
+
+<p>They went back to Madrid with little Milita, as they called her for
+short, abbreviating the diminutive of Emilia. Renovales brought with him
+as his whole capital some few thousand lire, that represented
+Josephina's savings and the product of his sale of part of the furniture
+that decorated the poorly furnished halls of the Foscarini palace.</p>
+
+<p>At first it was hard. Do&ntilde;a Emilia died a few months after they reached
+Madrid. Her funeral did not come up to the dreams the illustrious widow
+had always fashioned. Hardly a score of her countless relatives were
+present. Poor old lady, if she had known how her hopes were destined to
+be disappointed! Renovales was almost glad of the event. With it, the
+only tie that bound<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> them to society was broken. He and Josephina lived
+in a fifth story flat on the Calle de Alcal&aacute;, near the Plaza de Toros,
+with a large terrace that the artist converted into a studio. Their life
+was modest, secluded, humble, without friends or functions. She spent
+the day taking care of her daughter and the house, without help except a
+dull, poorly-paid maid. Oftentimes when she seemed most active, she fell
+into a sudden languor, complaining of strange, new ailments.</p>
+
+<p>Mariano hardly ever worked at home; he painted out of doors. He despised
+the conventional light of the studio, the closeness of its atmosphere.
+He wandered through the suburbs of Madrid and the neighboring provinces
+in search of rough, simple types, whose faces seemed to bear the stamp
+of the ancient Spanish soul. He climbed the Guadarrama in the midst of
+winter, standing alone in the snowy fields like an Arctic explorer, to
+transfer to his canvas the century-old pines, twisted and black under
+their caps of frozen sleet.</p>
+
+<p>When the Exhibition took place, Renovales' name became famous in a
+flash. He did not present a huge picture with a key, as he had at his
+first triumph. They were small canvases, studies prompted by a chance
+meeting; bits of nature, men and landscapes reproduced with an
+astonishing, brutal truth that shocked the public.</p>
+
+<p>The sober fathers of painting writhed as if they had received a slap in
+the face, before those sketches that seemed to flame among the other
+dead, leaden pictures. They admitted that Renovales was a painter, but
+he lacked imagination, invention, his only merit was his ability to
+transfer to the canvas what his eyes saw. The younger men flocked to the
+standard of the new master; there were endless disputes, impassioned
+arguments, deadly hatred, and over this battle Renovales', name<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span>
+flitted, appearing almost daily in the newspapers, till he was almost as
+celebrated as a bull-fighter or an orator in the Congress.</p>
+
+<p>The struggle lasted for six years, giving rise to a storm of insults and
+applause every time that Renovales exhibited one of his works, and
+meanwhile the master, discussed as he was, lived in poverty, forced to
+paint water-colors in the old style which he secretly sent to his dealer
+in Rome. But all combats have their end. The public finally accepted as
+unquestionable a name that they saw every day; his enemies, weakened by
+the unconscious effect of public opinion, grew tired, and the master
+like all innovators, as soon as the first success of the scandal was
+over, began to limit his daring, pruning and softening his original
+brutality. The dreaded painter became fashionable. The easy,
+instantaneous success he had won at the beginning of his career was
+renewed, but more solidly and more definitely, like a conquest made by
+rough, hard paths when there is a struggle at every step.</p>
+
+<p>Money, the fickle page, came back to him, holding the train of glory. He
+sold pictures at prices unheard of in Spain and they grew fabulously as
+they were repeated by his admirers. Some American millionaires,
+surprised that a Spanish painter should be mentioned abroad and that the
+principal reviews in Europe should reproduce his works, bought canvases
+as objects of great luxury. The master, embittered by the poverty of his
+years of struggle, suddenly felt a longing for money, an overpowering
+greed that his friends had never known in him. His wife seemed to grow
+more sickly every day; her daughter was growing up and he wanted his
+Milita to have the education and the luxuries of a princess. They now
+had a respectable house of their own, but he wanted something better for
+them.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> His business instinct, which everyone recognized in him when he
+was not blinded by some artistic prejudice, strove to make his brush an
+instrument of great profits.</p>
+
+<p>Pictures were bound to disappear, according to the master. Modern rooms,
+small and soberly decorated, were not fitted for the large canvases that
+ornamented the walls of drawing rooms in the old days. Besides, the
+reception rooms of the present, like the rooms in a doll's house, were
+good merely for pretty pictures marked by stereotyped mannerisms. Scenes
+taken from nature were out of place in this background. The only way to
+make money then was to paint portraits and Renovales forgot his
+distinction as an innovator in order to win at any cost fame as a
+portrait painter of society people. He painted members of the royal
+family in all sorts of postures, not omitting any of their important
+occupations; on foot, and on horseback, with a general's plumes or a
+gray hunting jacket, killing pigeons or riding in an automobile. He
+portrayed the beauties of the oldest families, concealing imperceptibly,
+with clever dissimulation, the ravages of time, giving firmness to the
+flabby flesh with his brush, holding up the heavy eyelids and cheeks
+that sagged with fatigue and the poison of rouge. After successes at
+court, the rich considered a portrait by Renovales as an indispensable
+decoration for their drawing rooms. They sought him because his
+signature cost thousands of dollars; to possess a canvas by him was an
+evidence of opulence, quite as necessary as an automobile of the best
+make.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales was as rich as a painter can be. It was at that time that he
+built what envious people called his "pantheon"; a magnificent mansion
+behind the iron grating of the Retiro.</p>
+
+<p>He had a violent desire to build a home after his own heart and image,
+like those mollusks that build a shell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> with the substance of their
+bodies so that it may serve both as a dwelling and a defense. There
+awakened in him that longing for show, for pompous, swaggering, amusing
+originality that lies dormant in the mind of every artist. At first he
+planned a reproduction of Rubens' palace in Antwerp, open <i>loggie</i> for
+studios, leafy gardens covered with flowers at all seasons, and in the
+paths, gazelles, giraffes, birds of bright plumage, like flying flowers,
+and other exotic animals which this great painter used as models in his
+desire to copy Nature in all its magnificence.</p>
+
+<p>But he was forced to give up this dream, on account of the nature of the
+building sites in Madrid, a few thousand feet of barren, chalky soil,
+bounded by a wretched fence and as dry as only Castile can be. Since
+this Rubenesque ostentation was not possible, he took refuge in
+Classicism and in a little garden he erected a sort of Greek temple that
+should serve at once as a dwelling and a studio. On the triangular
+pediment rose three tripods like torch-holders, that gave the house the
+appearance of a commemorative tomb. But in order that those who stopped
+outside the grating might make no mistake, the master had garlands of
+laurel, palettes surrounded with crowns, carved on the stone fa&ccedil;ade, and
+in the midst of this display of simple modesty a short inscription in
+gold letters of average size&mdash;"Renovales." Exactly like a store. Inside,
+in two studios where no one ever painted and which led to the real
+working studio, the finished pictures were exhibited on easels covered
+with antique textures, and callers gazed with wonder at the collection
+of properties fit for a theater,&mdash;suits of armor, tapestries, old
+standards hanging from the ceiling, show-cases full of ancient
+knick-knacks, deep couches with canopies of oriental stuffs supported by
+lances, century old coffers and open secre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span>taries shining with the pale
+gold of their rows of drawers.</p>
+
+<p>These studios where no one studied were like the luxurious line of
+waiting rooms in the house of a doctor who charges twenty dollars for a
+consultation, or like the anterooms, furnished in dark leather with
+venerable pictures, of a famous lawyer, who never opens his mouth
+without carrying off a large portion of his client's fortune. People who
+waited in these two studios spacious as the nave of a church, with the
+silent majesty which comes with the lapse of years, were brought to the
+necessary frame of mind to make them submit to the enormous prices the
+master demanded.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales had "made good" and he could rest calmly, as his admirers
+said. And still the master was gloomy; his nature, embittered by his
+years of silent suffering, broke out in violent fits of temper.</p>
+
+<p>The slightest attack by some insignificant enemy was enough to send him
+into a rage. His pupils thought it was due to the fact that he was
+getting old. His struggles had so aged him that with his heavy beard and
+his round shoulders he looked ten years older than he was.</p>
+
+<p>In this white temple, on the pediment of which his name shone in letters
+of glorious gold, he was not so happy as in the modest houses in Italy
+or the little garret near the Plaza de Toros. All that was left of the
+Josephina of the first months of his married life was a distant shadow.
+The "<i>Maja Desnuda</i>" of the happy nights in Rome and Venice was nothing
+but a memory. On her return to Spain the false stoutness of motherhood
+had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>She grew thin, as if some hidden fire were devouring her; the flesh that
+had covered her body with graceful curves melted away in the flames that
+burned within her. The sharp angles and dark hollows of her skeleton
+be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>gan to show beneath her pale, flabby flesh. Poor <i>"Maja Desnuda"!</i>
+Her husband pitied her, attributing her decline to the struggles and
+cares she had suffered when they first returned to Madrid.</p>
+
+<p>For her sake, he was eager to conquer, to become rich, that he might
+provide her with the comforts he had dreamed of. Her illness seemed to
+be mental; it was neurasthenia, melancholia. The poor woman had suffered
+without doubt at being condemned to a pauper's existence, in Madrid,
+where she had once lived in comparative splendor, this time in a
+wretched house, struggling with poverty, forced to perform the most
+menial tasks. She complained of strange pains, her legs lost their
+strength, she sank into a chair where she would stay motionless for
+hours at a time, weeping without knowing why. Her digestion was poor;
+for weeks her stomach refused all nourishment. At night she would toss
+about in bed, unable to sleep and at daybreak she was up flitting about
+the house with a feverish activity, turning things upside down, finding
+fault with the servant, with her husband, with herself, until suddenly
+she would collapse from the height of her excitement and begin to cry.</p>
+
+<p>These domestic trials broke the painter's spirit, but he bore them
+patiently. Now a gentle sympathy was added to his former love, when he
+saw her so weak, without any remnant of her former charm except her
+eyes, sunk in their bluish sockets, bright with the mysterious fire of
+fever. Poor little girl! Her struggles brought her to such a pass. Her
+weakness filled Renovales with a sort of remorse. Her lot was that of
+the soldier who sacrifices himself for his general's glory. He had
+conquered, but he left behind him the woman he loved, fallen in the
+struggle because she was the weaker.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He admired, too, her maternal self-sacrifice. The baby, Milita, who
+attracted attention because of her whiteness and ruddiness, had the
+strength that her mother lacked. The greediness of this strong,
+enslaving creature had absorbed all of the mother's life.</p>
+
+<p>When the artist was rich and installed his family in the new house, he
+thought that Josephina was going to get well. The doctors were confident
+of a rapid improvement. The first day that they walked through the
+parlors and studios of the new house, taking note of the furniture and
+the valuables, old and new, with a glance of satisfaction, Renovales put
+him arm around the waist of the weak little doll, bending his head over
+her, caressing her forehead with his bearded lips.</p>
+
+<p>Everything was hers, the house and its sumptuous decorations, hers too
+was the money that was left and that he would continue to make. She was
+the owner, the absolute mistress, she could spend all she wanted to, he
+would stand for everything. She could wear stylish clothes, have
+carriages, make her former friends green with envy, be proud of being
+the wife of a famous painter, much more proud than others who had landed
+a ducal crown by marriage. Was she satisfied?</p>
+
+<p>She said "Yes," nodding her assent weakly, and she even stood on tiptoe
+to kiss the lips that seemed to caress her through a cloud of hair, but
+her expression was sad and her listless movements were like a withered
+flower's, as if there was no joy on earth that could lift her out of
+this dejection.</p>
+
+<p>After a few days, when the first impress of the change in her mode of
+life was over, the old outbreaks that had so often disturbed their
+former dwelling began again in the luxurious palace.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales found her in the dining-room with her head in her hands,
+crying, but unwilling to explain the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> cause of her tears. When he tried
+to take her in his arms, caressing her like a child, the little woman
+became as agitated as if she had received an insult.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go!" she cried with a hostile look. "Don't touch me. Go away!"</p>
+
+<p>At other times he looked all over the house for her in vain, questioning
+Milita who, accustomed to her mother's outbreaks and made selfish by her
+girlish strength, paid little attention to her and kept on playing with
+her dolls.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, papa; she's probably crying up stairs," she would answer
+naively.</p>
+
+<p>And in some corner of the upper story, in the bedroom, beside the bed or
+among the clothes in the wardrobe, the husband would find her, sitting
+on the floor with her chin in her hands, her eyes fixed on the wall as
+if she were looking at something invisible and mysterious that only she
+could see. She was not crying, her eyes were dry and enlarged with an
+expression of terror, and her husband tried in vain to attract her
+attention. She remained motionless, cold, indifferent to his caresses,
+as if he were a stranger, as if there were a hopeless gap between them.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to die," she said in a serious, tense tone. "I am of no use in
+the world; I want to rest."</p>
+
+<p>The deadly resignation would change a moment later into furious
+antagonism. Renovales could never tell how the quarrel began. The most
+insignificant word on his part, the expression of his face, silence
+even, was all that was needed to bring on the storm. Josephina began to
+speak with a taunting accent that made her words cut like cold steel.
+She found fault with the painter for what he did and what he did not do,
+for his most trifling habits, for what he painted, and presently,
+extending the radius of her insults to include the whole<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> world, she
+broke out into denunciations of the distinguished people who formed her
+husband's clientele and brought him such profits. He might be satisfied
+with painting the portraits of those people, disreputable society men
+and women. Her mother, who was in close touch with that society, had
+told her many stories about them. The women she knew still better;
+almost all of them had been her companions at boarding-school or her
+friends. They had married to make sport of their husbands; they all had
+a past, they were worse than the women who walked the streets at night.
+This house with all its fa&ccedil;ade of laurels and its gold letters was a
+brothel. One of these fine days she would come into the studio and throw
+them into the street to have their pictures painted somewhere else.</p>
+
+<p>"For God's sake, Josephina," Renovales murmured with a troubled voice,
+"don't talk like that. Don't think of such outrageous things. I don't
+see how you can talk that way. Milita will hear us."</p>
+
+<p>Now that her nervous anger was exhausted, Josephina would burst into
+tears and Renovales would have to leave the table and take her to bed,
+where she lay, crying out for the hundredth time that she wanted to die.</p>
+
+<p>This life was even more intolerable because he was faithful to his wife,
+because his love, mingled with habit and routine, kept him firmly
+devoted to her.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the afternoon, several of his friends used to gather in
+his studio, among them the jolly Cotoner who had moved to Madrid. When
+the twilight crept in through the huge window and made them all prone to
+friendly confidences, Renovales always made the same statement.</p>
+
+<p>"As a boy I had my good times just like anyone else, but since I was
+married I have never had anything to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> do with any woman except my own
+wife. I am proud to say so."</p>
+
+<p>And the big man drew himself up to his full height and stroked his
+beard, as proud of his faithfulness to his wife as other men are of
+their good fortune in love.</p>
+
+<p>When they talked about beautiful women in his presence, or looked at
+portraits of great foreign beauties, the master did not conceal his
+approval.</p>
+
+<p>"Very beautiful! Very pretty to paint!"</p>
+
+<p>His enthusiasm over beauty never went beyond the limits of art. There
+was only one woman in the world for him, his wife; the others were
+models.</p>
+
+<p>He, who carried in his mind a perfect orgy of flesh, who worshiped the
+nude with religious fervor, reserved all his manly homage for his wife
+who grew constantly more sickly, more gloomy, and waited with the
+patience of a lover for a moment of calm, a ray of sunlight among the
+incessant storms.</p>
+
+<p>The doctors, who admitted their inability to cure the nervous disorder
+that was consuming the wife, had hopes of a sudden change and
+recommended to the husband that he should be extremely kind to her. This
+only increased his patient gentleness. They attributed the nervous
+trouble to the birth and nursing of the child, that had broken her weak
+health; they suspected, too, the existence of some unknown cause that
+kept the sick woman in constant excitement.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales, who studied his wife closely in his eagerness to recover
+peace in his house, soon discovered the true cause of her illness.</p>
+
+<p>Milita was growing up; already she was a woman. She was fourteen years
+old and wore long skirts, and her healthy beauty was beginning to
+attract the glances of men.</p>
+
+<p>"One of these days they'll carry her off," said the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> master laughing.
+And his wife, when she heard him talking about marriage, making
+conjectures on his future son-in-law, closed her eyes and said in a
+tense voice, that revealed her insuperable obstinacy:</p>
+
+<p>"She shall marry anyone she wants to,&mdash;except a painter. I would rather
+see her dead than that."</p>
+
+<p>It was then Renovales divined his wife's true illness. It was jealousy,
+a terrific, deadly, ruinous jealousy; it was the sadness of realizing
+that she was sickly. She was certain of her husband; she knew his
+declarations of faithfulness to her. But when the painter spoke of his
+artistic interests in her presence, he did not hide his worship of
+beauty, his religious cult of form. Even if he was silent, she
+penetrated his thoughts; she read in him that fervor which dated from
+his youth and had grown greater as the years went by. When she looked at
+the statues of sovereign nakedness that decorated the studios, when she
+glanced through the albums of pictures where the light of flesh shone
+brightly amid the shadows of the engraving, she compared them mentally
+with her own form emaciated by illness.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales' eyes that seemed to worship every beauty of form were the
+same eyes that saw her in all her ugliness. That man could never love
+her. His faithfulness was pity, perhaps habit, unconscious virtue. She
+could not believe that it was love. This illusion might be possible with
+another man, but he was an artist. By day he worshiped beauty; at night
+he was brought face to face with ugliness, with physical wretchedness.</p>
+
+<p>She was constantly tormented by jealousy, that embittered her mind and
+consumed her life, a jealousy that was inconsolable for the very reason
+that it had no real foundation.</p>
+
+<p>The consciousness of her ugliness brought with it a sadness, an
+insatiable envy of everyone, a desire to die<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span> but to kill the world
+first, that she might drag it down with her in her fall.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband's caresses irritated her like an insult. Maybe he thought he
+loved her, maybe his advances were in good faith, but she read his
+thoughts and she found there her irresistible enemy, the rival that
+overshadowed her with her beauty. And there was no remedy for this. She
+was married to a man who, as long as he lived, would be faithful to his
+religion of beauty. How well she remembered the days when she had
+refused to allow her husband to paint her youthful body! If youth and
+beauty would but come back to her, she would recklessly cast off all her
+veils, would stand in the middle of the studio as arrogantly as a
+bacchante, crying,</p>
+
+<p>"Paint! Satisfy yourself with my flesh, and whenever you think of your
+eternal beloved, whom you call Beauty, fancy that you see her with my
+face, that she has my body!"</p>
+
+<p>It was a terrible misfortune to be the wife of an artist. She would
+never marry her daughter to a painter; she would rather see her dead.
+Men who carry with them the demon of form, cannot live in peace and
+happiness except with a companion who is eternally young, eternally
+fair.</p>
+
+<p>Her husband's fidelity made her desperate. That chaste artist was always
+musing over the memory of naked beauties, fancying pictures he did not
+dare to paint for fear of her. With her sick woman's penetration, she
+seemed to read this longing in her husband's face. She would have
+preferred certain infidelity, to see him in love with another woman, mad
+with passion. He might return from such a wandering outside the bonds of
+matrimony, wearied and humble, begging her forgiveness; but from the
+other, he would never return.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When Renovates discovered the cause of her sadness, he tenderly
+undertook to cure his wife's mental disorder. He avoided speaking of his
+artistic interests in her presence; he discovered terrible defects in
+the fair ladies who sought him as a portrait painter; he praised
+Josephina's spiritual beauty; he painted pictures of her, putting her
+features on the canvas, but beautifying them with, subtle skill.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled, with that eternal condescension that a woman has for the
+most stupendous, most shameful deceits, as long as they flatter her.</p>
+
+<p>"It's you," said Renovales, "your face, your charm, your air of
+distinction. I really don't think I have made you as beautiful as you
+are."</p>
+
+<p>She continued to smile, but soon her look grew hard, her lips tightened
+and the shadow spread little by little across her face.</p>
+
+<p>She fixed her eyes on the painter's as if she were scrutinizing his
+thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>It was a lie. Her husband was flattering her; he thought he loved her,
+but only his flesh was faithful. The invincible enemy, the eternal
+beloved, was mistress of his mind.</p>
+
+<p>Tortured by this mental unfaithfulness and by the rage which her
+helplessness produced, she would gradually fall into one of the nervous
+storms that broke out in a shower of tears and a thunder of insults and
+recriminations.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales' life was a hell at the very time when he possessed the glory
+and wealth which he had dreamed of so many years, building on them his
+hope of happiness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was three o'clock in the afternoon when the painter went home after
+his luncheon with the Hungarian.</p>
+
+<p>As he entered the dining-room, before going to the studio, he saw two
+women with their hats and veils on who looked as if they were getting
+ready to go out. One of them, as tall as the painter, threw her arms
+around his neck.</p>
+
+<p>"Papa, dear, we waited for you until nearly two o'clock. Did you have a
+good luncheon?"</p>
+
+<p>And she kissed him noisily, rubbing her fresh, rosy cheeks against the
+master's gray beard.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales smiled good naturedly under this shower of caresses. Ah, his
+Milita! She was the only joy in that gloomy, showy house. It was she who
+sweetened that atmosphere of tedious strife which seemed to emanate from
+the sick woman. He looked at his daughter with an air of comic
+gallantry.</p>
+
+<p>"Very pretty; yes, I swear you are very pretty to-day. You are a perfect
+Rubens, my dear, a brunette Rubens. And where are we going to show off?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked with a father's pride at that strong, rosy body, in which the
+transition to womanhood was marked by a sort of passing delicacy&mdash;the
+result of her rapid growth&mdash;and a dark circle around her eyes. Her soft,
+mysterious glance was that of a woman who is beginning to understand the
+meaning of life. She dressed with a sort of exotic elegance; her clothes
+had a masculine appearance; her mannish collar and tie were in keeping
+with the rigid energy of her movements, with her wide-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>soled English
+boots, and the violent swing of her legs that opened her skirts like a
+compass when she walked, more intent on speed and a heavy step than on a
+graceful carriage. The master admired her healthy beauty. What a
+splendid specimen! The race would not die out with her. She was like
+him, wholly like him; if he had been a woman, he would have been like
+his Milita.</p>
+
+<p>She kept on talking, without taking her arms from her father's
+shoulders, with her eyes, tremulous like molten gold, fixed on the
+master.</p>
+
+<p>She was going for her daily walk with "Miss," a two hours' tramp through
+the Castellana and the Retiro, without stopping a moment to sit down,
+taking a peripatetic lesson in English on the way. For the first time
+Renovates turned around to speak to "Miss," a stout woman with a red,
+wrinkled face who, when she smiled, showed a set of teeth that shone
+like yellow dominoes. In the studio Renovales and his friends often
+laughed at "Miss's" appearance and eccentricities, at her red wig that
+was placed on her head as carelessly as a hat, at her terrible false
+teeth, at her bonnets that she made herself out of chance bits of ribbon
+and discarded ornaments, of her chronic lack of appetite, that forced
+her to live on beer, which kept her in a continual state of confusion,
+which was revealed in her exaggerated curtsies. Soft and heavy from
+drink, she was alarmed at the approach of the hour of the walk, a daily
+torment for her, as she tried painfully to keep up with Milita's long
+strides. Seeing the painter looking at her, she turned even redder and
+made three profound curtsies.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mr. Renovales, oh, sir!"</p>
+
+<p>And she did not call him "Lord," because the master greeting her with a
+nod, forgot her presence and began to talk again with his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>Milita was eager to hear about her father's luncheon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> with Tekli. And so
+he had had some Chianti? Selfish man! When he knew how much she liked
+it! He ought to have let them know sooner that he would not be home.
+Fortunately Cotoner was at the house and mamma had made him stay, so
+that they would not have to lunch alone. Their old friend had gone to
+the kitchen and prepared one of those dishes he had learned to make in
+the days when he was a landscape-painter. Milita observed that all
+landscape-painters knew something about cooking. Their outdoor life, the
+necessities of their wandering existence among country inns and huts,
+defying poverty, gave them a liking for this art.</p>
+
+<p>They had had a very pleasant luncheon; mamma had laughed at Cotoner's
+jokes, who was always in good humor, but during the dessert, when
+Soldevilla, Renovales' favorite pupil, came, she had felt indisposed and
+had disappeared to hide her eyes swimming with tears and her breast that
+heaved with sobs.</p>
+
+<p>"She's probably upstairs," said the girl with a sort of indifference,
+accustomed to these outbreaks. "Good-by, papa, dear, a kiss. Cotoner and
+Soldevilla are waiting for you in the studio. Another kiss. Let me bite
+you."</p>
+
+<p>And after fixing her little teeth gently in one of the master's cheeks,
+she ran out, followed by Miss, who was already puffing in anticipation
+at the thought of the tiresome walk.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales remained motionless as if he hesitated to shake off the
+atmosphere of affection in which his daughter enveloped him. Milita was
+his, wholly his. She loved her mother, but her affection was cold in
+comparison with the ardent passion she felt for him&mdash;that vague,
+instinctive preference girls feel for their fathers and which is, as it
+were, a forecast of the worship the man they love will later inspire in
+them.</p>
+
+<p>For a moment he thought of looking for Josephina to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> console her, but
+after a brief reflection, he gave up the idea. It probably was nothing;
+his daughter was not disturbed; a sudden fit such as she usually had. If
+he went upstairs he would run the risk of an unpleasant scene that would
+spoil the afternoon, rob him of his desire to work and banish the
+youthful light-heartedness that filled him after his luncheon with
+Tekli.</p>
+
+<p>He turned his steps towards the last studio, the only one that deserved
+the name, for it was there he worked, and he saw Cotoner sitting in a
+huge armchair, the seat of which sagged under his corpulent frame, with
+his elbows resting on the oaken arms, his waistcoat unbuttoned to
+relieve his well-filled paunch, his head sunk between his shoulders, his
+face red and sweating, his eyes half closed with the sweet joy of
+digestion in that comfortable atmosphere heated by a huge stove.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner was getting old; his mustache was white and his head was bald,
+but his face was as rosy and shining as a child's. He breathed the
+placidness of a respectable old bachelor whose only love is for good
+living and who appreciates the digestive sleepiness of the
+boaconstrictor as the greatest of happiness.</p>
+
+<p>He was tired of living in Rome. Commissions were scarce. The Popes lived
+longer than the Biblical patriarchs. The chromo portraits of the Pontiff
+had simply forced him out of business. Besides, he was old and the young
+painters who came to Rome did not know him; they were poor fellows who
+looked on him as a clown, and never laid aside their seriousness except
+to make sport of him. His time had passed. The echoes of Mariano's
+triumphs at home had come to his ears, had determined him to move to
+Madrid. Life was the same everywhere. He had friends in Madrid, too. And
+here he had continued the life he had led in Rome, without any effort,
+feeling a kind of longing for glory in that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> narrow personality which
+had made him a mere day-laborer in art, as if his relations with
+Renovales imposed on him the duty of seeking a place near his in the
+world of painting.</p>
+
+<p>He had gone back to landscapes, never winning any greater success than
+the simple admirations of wash-women and brickmakers who gathered around
+his easel in the suburbs of Madrid, whispering to each other that the
+gentleman who wore on his lapel the variegated button of his numerous
+Papal Orders, must be a famous old "buck," one of the great painters the
+papers talked about. Renovales had secured for him two honorable
+mentions at the Exhibitions and after this victory, shared with all the
+young chaps who were just beginning, Cotoner settled down in the rut, to
+rest forever, counting that the mission of his life was fulfilled.</p>
+
+<p>Life in Madrid was no more difficult for him than in Rome. He slept at
+the house of a priest whom he had known in Italy, and had accompanied on
+his tours as Papal representative. This chaplain, who was employed in
+the office of the Rota, considered it a great honor to entertain the
+artist, recalling his friendly relations with the cardinals and
+believing that he was in correspondence with the Pope himself.</p>
+
+<p>They had agreed on a sum which he was to pay for his lodging, but the
+priest did not seem to be in any hurry for payment; he would soon give
+him a commission for a painting for some nuns for whom he was confessor.</p>
+
+<p>The eating problem offered still less difficulty for Cotoner. He had the
+days of the week divided among various rich families noted for their
+piety, whom he had met in Rome during the great Spanish pilgrimages.
+They were wealthy miners from Bilbao, gentlemen farmers from Andalusia,
+old marchionesses who thought about God a great deal, but continued to
+live their comfortable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> life to which they gave a serious tone by the
+respectable color of devotion.</p>
+
+<p>The painter felt closely attached to this little group; they were
+serious, religious and they ate well. Everyone called him "good
+Cotoner." The ladies smiled with gratitude when he presented them with a
+rosary or some other article of devotion brought from Rome. If they
+expressed the desire of obtaining some dispensation from the Vatican, he
+would offer to write to "his friend the cardinal." The husbands, glad to
+entertain an artist so cheaply, consulted him about the plan for a new
+chapel or the designs for an altar, and on their saint's day they would
+receive with a condescending mien some present from Cotoner&mdash;a "little
+daub," a landscape painted on a piece of wood, that often needed an
+explanation before they could understand what it was meant for.</p>
+
+<p>At dinners he was a constant source of amusement for these people of
+solid principles and measured words, with his stories of the strange
+doings of the "Monsignori" or the "Eminences" he used to know in Rome.
+They listened to these jokes with a sort of unction, however dubious
+they were, seeing that they came from such respectable personages.</p>
+
+<p>When the round of invitations was interrupted by illness or absence, and
+Cotoner lacked a place to dine, he stayed at Renovales' house without
+waiting for an invitation. The master wanted him to live with them, but
+he did not accept. He was very fond of the family; Milita played with
+him as if he were an old dog, Josephina felt a sort of affection for
+him, because his presence reminded her of the good old days in Rome. But
+Cotoner, in spite of this, seemed to be somewhat reluctant, divining the
+storms that darkened the master's life. He preferred his free existence,
+to which he adapted himself with the ease of a parasite. After dinner
+was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> over, he would listen to the weighty discussions between learned
+priests and serious old church-goers, nodding his approval, and an hour
+later he would be jesting impiously in some caf&eacute; or other with painters,
+actors and journalists. He knew everybody; he only needed to speak to an
+artist twice and he would call him by his first name and swear that he
+loved and admired him from the bottom of his heart. When Renovales came
+into the studio, he shook off his drowsiness and stretched out his short
+legs so that he could touch the floor and get out of the chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Did they tell you, Mariano? A magnificent dish! I made them an
+Andalusian pot-pourri! They were tickled to death over it!"</p>
+
+<p>He was enthusiastic over his culinary achievement as if all his merits
+were summed up in this skill. Afterwards, while Renovales was handing
+his coat and hat to the servant who followed him, Cotoner with the
+curiosity of an intimate friend who wants to know all the details of his
+idol's life, questioned him about his luncheon with the foreigner.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales lay down on a divan deep as a niche, between two bookcases and
+lined with piles of cushions. As they spoke of Tekli, they recalled
+friends in Rome, painters of different nationalities who twenty years
+before had walked with their heads high, following the star of hope as
+if they were hypnotized. Renovales, in his pride in his strength,
+incapable of hypocritical modesty, declared that he was the only one who
+had succeeded. Poor Tekli was a professor; his copy of Vel&aacute;squez
+amounted to nothing more than the work of a patient cart horse in art.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think so?" asked Cotoner doubtfully. "Is his work so poor?"</p>
+
+<p>His selfishness kept him from saying a word against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> anyone; he had no
+faith in criticism, he believed blindly in praise; thereby preserving
+his reputation as a good fellow, which gave him the entree everywhere
+and made his life easy. The figure of the Hungarian was fixed in his
+memory and made him think of a series of luncheons before he left
+Madrid.</p>
+
+<p>"Good afternoon, master."</p>
+
+<p>It was Soldevilla who came out from behind a screen with his hands
+clasped behind his back under the tail of his short sack coat, his head
+in the air, tortured by the excessive height of his stiff, shining
+collar, throwing out his chest so as to show off better his velvet
+waistcoat. His thinness and his small stature were made up for by the
+length of his blond mustache that curled around his pink little nose as
+if it were trying to reach the straight, scraggly bangs on his forehead.
+This Soldevilla was Renovales' favorite pupil&mdash;"his weakness" Cotoner
+called him. The master had fought a great battle to win him the
+fellowship at Rome; afterward he had given him the prize at several
+exhibitions.</p>
+
+<p>He looked on him almost as a son, attracted perhaps by the contrast
+between his own rough strength and the weakness of that artistic dandy,
+always proper, always amiable, who consulted this master about
+everything, even if afterwards he did not pay much attention to his
+advice. When he criticized his fellow painters, he did it with a
+venomous suavity, with a feminine finesse. Renovales laughed at his
+appearance and his habits and Cotoner joined in. He was like china,
+always shining; you could not find the least speck of dust on him; you
+were sure he slept in a cupboard. These present-day painters! The two
+old artists recalled the disorder of their youth, their Bohemian
+carelessness, with long beards and huge hats, all their odd
+extravagances to distinguish them from the rest of men, forming a world
+by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> themselves. They felt out of humor with these painters of the last
+batch&mdash;proper, prudent, incapable of doing anything absurd, copying the
+fashions of the idle and presenting the appearance of State
+functionaries, clerks, who wielded the brush.</p>
+
+<p>His greeting over, Soldevilla fairly overwhelmed the master with his
+effusive praise. He had been admiring the portrait of the Countess of
+Alberca.</p>
+
+<p>"A perfect marvel, master. The best thing you have painted, and it's
+only half done, too."</p>
+
+<p>This praise aroused Renovales. He got up, shoved aside the screen and
+pulled out an easel that held a large canvas, until it was opposite the
+light that came in through the wide window.</p>
+
+<p>On a gray background stood a woman dressed in white, with that majesty
+of beauty that is accustomed to admiration. The aigrette of feathers and
+diamonds seemed to tremble on her tawny yellow curls, the curve of her
+breasts was outlined through the lace of her low-necked gown, her gloves
+reached above her elbows, in one of her hands she held a costly fan, in
+the other, a dark cloak, lined with flame-colored satin, that slipped
+from her bare shoulders, on the point of falling. The lower part of the
+figure was merely outlined in charcoal on the white canvas. The head,
+almost finished, seemed to look at the three men with its proud eyes,
+cold, but with a false coldness that bespoke a hidden passion within, a
+dead volcano that might come to life at any moment.</p>
+
+<p>She was a tall, stately woman, with a charming, well-proportioned
+figure, who seemed to keep the freshness of youth, thanks to the
+healthy, comfortable life she led. The corners of her eyes were narrowed
+with a tired fold.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner looked at her from his seat with chaste calmness, commenting
+tranquilly on her beauty, feeling above temptation.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It's she, you've caught her, Mariano. She has been a great woman."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales appeared offended at this comment.</p>
+
+<p>"She is," he said with a sort of hostility. "She is still."</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner could not argue with his idol and he hastened to correct
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>"She is a charming woman, very attractive, yes sir, and very stylish.
+They say she is talented and cannot bear to let men who worship her
+suffer. She has certainly enjoyed life."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales began to bristle again, as if these words cut him.</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense! lies, calumnies!" he said angrily. "Inventions of some young
+fellows who spread these disgraceful reports because they were
+rejected."</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner began to explain away what he had said. He did not know
+anything, he had heard it. The ladies at whose houses he dined spoke ill
+of the Alberca woman, but perhaps it was merely woman's gossip. There
+was a moment of silence and Renovales, as if he wanted to change the
+subject of conversation, turned to Soldevilla.</p>
+
+<p>"And you, aren't you painting any longer? I always find you here in
+working hours."</p>
+
+<p>He smiled somewhat knowingly as he said this, while the youth blushed
+and tried to make excuses. He was working hard, but every day he felt
+the need of dropping into his master's studio for a minute before he
+went to his own.</p>
+
+<p>It was a habit he had formed when he was a beginner, in that period, the
+best in his life, when he studied beside the great painter in a studio
+far less sumptuous than this.</p>
+
+<p>"And Milita? Did you see her?" continued Renovales with a good-natured
+smile that had not lost its playful<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>ness. "Didn't she 'kid' you, for
+wearing that dazzling new tie?"</p>
+
+<p>Soldevilla smiled too. He had been in the dining-room with Do&ntilde;a
+Josephina and Milita and the latter had made fun of him as usual. But
+she did not mean anything; the master knew that Milita and he treated
+each other like brother and sister.</p>
+
+<p>More than once when she was a little tot and he a lad, he had acted as
+her horse, trotting around the old studio with the little scamp on his
+back, pulling his hair and pounding him with her tiny fists.</p>
+
+<p>"She's very cute," interrupted Cotoner. "She is the most attractive, the
+best girl I know."</p>
+
+<p>"And the unequaled L&oacute;pez de Sosa?" asked the master, once more in a
+playful tone. "Didn't that 'chauffeur' that drives us crazy with his
+automobiles come to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>Soldevilla's smile disappeared. He grew pale and his eyes flashed
+spitefully. No, he had not seen the gentleman. According to the ladies,
+he was busy repairing an automobile that had broken down on the Pardo
+road. And as if the recollection of this friend of the family was trying
+for him and he wished to avoid any further allusions to him, he said
+"good-by" to the master. He was going to work; he must take advantage of
+the two hours of sunlight that were left. But before he went out he
+stopped to say another word in praise of the portrait of the countess.</p>
+
+<p>The two friends remained alone for a long while in silence. Renovales,
+buried in the shadow of that niche of Persian stuffs with which his
+divan was canopied, gazed at the picture.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she going to come to-day?" asked Cotoner, pointing to the canvas.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales shrugged his shoulders. To-day or the next<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> day; it was
+impossible to do any serious work with that woman.</p>
+
+<p>He expected her that afternoon; but he would not feel surprised if she
+failed to keep her appointment. For nearly a month he had been unable to
+get in two days in succession. She was always engaged; she was president
+of societies for the education and emancipation of woman; she was
+constantly planning festivals and raffles; the activity of a tired woman
+of society, the fluttering of a wild bird that made her want to be
+everywhere at the same time, without the will to withdraw when once she
+was started in the current of feminine excitement. Suddenly the painter
+whose eyes were fixed on the portrait gave a cry of enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>"What a woman, Pepe! What a woman to paint!"</p>
+
+<p>His eyes seemed to lay bare the beauty that stood on the canvas in all
+its aristocratic grandeur. They strove to penetrate the mystery of that
+covering of lace and silk, to see the color and the lines of the form
+that was hardly revealed through the gown. This mental reconstruction
+was helped by the bare shoulders and the curve of her breasts that
+seemed to tremble at the edge of her dress, separated by a line of soft
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>"That's just what I told your wife," said the Bohemian naively. "If you
+paint beautiful women, like the countess, it is merely for the sake of
+painting them and not that you would think of seeing in them anything
+more than a model."</p>
+
+<p>"Aha! So my wife has been talking to you about that!"</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner hastened to set his mind at ease, fearing his digestion might be
+disturbed. A mere trifle, nervousness on the part of poor Josephina, who
+saw the dark side of everything in her illness.</p>
+
+<p>She had referred during the luncheon to the Alberca woman and her
+portrait. She did not seem to be very<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span> fond of her, in spite of the fact
+that she had been her companion in boarding-school. She felt as other
+women did; the countess was an enemy, who inspired them with fear. But
+he had calmed her and finally succeeded in making her smile faintly.
+There was no use in talking about that any longer.</p>
+
+<p>But Renovales did not share his friend's optimism. He was well aware of
+his wife's state of mind; he understood now the motive that had made her
+flee from the table, to take refuge upstairs and to weep and long for
+death. She hated Concha as she did all the women who entered his studio.
+But this impression of sadness did not last very long in the painter; he
+was used to his wife's susceptibility. Besides, the consciousness of his
+faithfulness calmed him. His conscience was clean, and Josephina might
+believe what she would. It would only be one more injustice and he was
+resigned to endure his slavery without complaint.</p>
+
+<p>In order to forget his trouble, he began to talk about painting. The
+recollection of his conversation with Tekli enlivened him, for Tekli had
+been traveling all over Europe and was well acquainted with what the
+most famous masters were thinking and painting.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm getting old, Cotoner. Did you think I didn't know it? No, don't
+protest. I know that I am not old; forty-three years. I mean that I have
+lost my gait and cannot get started. It's a long time since I have done
+anything new; I always strike the same note. You know that some people,
+envious of my reputation are always throwing that defect in my face,
+like a vile insult."</p>
+
+<p>And the painter, with the selfishness of great artists who always think
+that they are neglected and the world begrudges them their glory,
+complained at the slavery that was imposed upon him by his good fortune.
+Making money! What a calamity for art! If the world were<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> governed by
+his common sense, artists with talent would be supported by the State,
+which would generously provide for all their needs and whims. There
+would be no need of bothering about making a living. "Paint what you
+want to, and as you please." Then great things would be done and art
+would advance with giant strides, not constrained to debase itself by
+flattering public vulgarity and the ignorance of the rich. But now, to
+be a celebrated painter it was necessary to make money and this could
+not be done except by portraits, opening a shop, painting the first one
+that appeared, without the right of choice. Accursed painting! In
+writing, poverty was a merit. It stood for truth and honesty. But the
+painter must be rich, his talent was judged by his profits. The fame of
+his pictures was connected with the idea of thousands of dollars. When
+people talked about his work they always said, "He's making such and
+such a sum of money," and to keep up this wealth, the indispensable
+companion of his glory, he had to paint by the job, cringing before the
+vulgar throng that pays.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales walked excitedly around the portrait. Sometimes this laborer's
+work was tolerable, when he was painting beautiful women and men whose
+faces had the light of intelligence. But the vulgar politicians, the
+rich men that looked like porters, the stout dames with dead faces that
+he had to paint! When he let his love for truth overcome him and copied
+the model as he saw it, he won another enemy, who paid the bill
+grumblingly and went away to tell everyone that Renovales was not so
+great as people thought. To avoid this he lied in his painting, having
+recourse to the methods employed by other mediocre artists and this base
+procedure tormented his conscience, as if he were robbing his inferiors
+who deserved respect for the very reason that they were less endowed for
+artistic production than he.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Besides, that is not painting, the whole of painting. We think we are
+artists because we can reproduce a face, and the face is only a part of
+the body. We tremble with fear at the thought of the nude. We have
+forgotten it. We speak of it with respect and fear, as we would of
+something religious, worthy of worship, but something we never see close
+at hand. A large part of our talent is the talent of a dry-goods clerk.
+Cloth, nothing but cloth; garments. The body must be carefully wrapped
+up or we flee from it as from a danger."</p>
+
+<p>He ceased his nervous walking to and fro and stopped in front of the
+picture, fixing his gaze on it.</p>
+
+<p>"Imagine, Pepe," he said in an undertone, looking first instinctively
+toward the door, with that eternal fear of being heard by his wife in
+the midst of his artistic raptures. "Imagine, if that woman would
+undress; if I could paint her as she certainly is."</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner burst into laughter with a look like a knavish friar.</p>
+
+<p>"Wonderful, Mariano, a masterpiece. But she won't. I'm sure she would
+refuse to undress, though I admit she isn't always particular."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales shook his fists in protest.</p>
+
+<p>"And why won't they? What a rut! What vulgarity!"</p>
+
+<p>In his artistic selfishness he fancied that the world had been created
+without any other purpose than supporting painters, the rest of humanity
+was made to serve them as models, and he was shocked at this
+incomprehensible modesty. Ah, where could they find now the beauties of
+Greece, the calm models of sculptors, the pale Venetian ladies painted
+by Titian, the graceful Flemish women of Rubens, and the dainty,
+sprightly beauties of Goya? Beauty was eclipsed forever behind the veils
+of hypocrisy and false modesty. Women had one lover to-day, another
+to-morrow and still they blushed at recalling the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> woman of other times,
+far more pure than they, who did not hesitate to reveal to the public
+admiration the perfect work of God, the chastity of the nude.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales lay down on the divan again, and in the twilight he talked
+confidentially with Cotoner in a subdued voice, sometimes looking toward
+the door as if he feared being overheard.</p>
+
+<p>For some time he had been dreaming of a masterpiece. He had it in his
+imagination complete even to the least details. He saw it, closing his
+eyes, just at it would be, if he ever succeeded in painting it. It was
+Phryne, the famous beauty of Athens, appearing naked before the crowd of
+pilgrims on the beach of Delphi. All the suffering humanity of Greece
+walked on the shore of the sea toward the famous temple, seeking divine
+intervention for the relief of their ills, cripples with distorted
+limbs, repulsive lepers, men swollen with dropsy, pale, suffering women,
+trembling old men, youths disfigured in hideous expressions, withered
+arms like bare bones, shapeless elephant legs, all the phases of a
+perverted Nature, the piteous, desperate expressions of human pain. When
+they see on the beach Phryne, the glory of Greece, whose beauty was a
+national pride, the pilgrims stop and gaze upon her, turning their backs
+to the temple, that outlines its marble columns in the background of the
+parched mountains; and the beautiful woman, filled with pity by this
+procession of suffering, desires to brighten their sadness, to cast a
+handful of health and beauty among their wretched furrows, and tears off
+her veils, giving them the royal alms of her nakedness. The white,
+radiant body is outlined on the dark blue of the sea. The wind scatters
+her hair like golden serpents on her ivory shoulders; the waves that die
+at her feet, toss upon her stars of foam that make her skin tremble with
+the caress from her amber neck down to her rosy feet. The wet sand,
+polished<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> and bright as a mirror, reproduces the sovereign nakedness,
+inverted and confused in serpentine lines that take on the shimmer of
+the rainbow as they disappear. And the pilgrims, on their knees, in the
+ecstasy of worship, stretch out their arms toward the mortal goddess,
+believing that Beauty and eternal Health have come to meet them.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales sat up and grasped Cotoner's arm as he described his future
+picture, and his friend nodded his approval gravely, impressed by the
+description.</p>
+
+<p>"Very fine! Sublime, Mariano!"</p>
+
+<p>But the master became dejected again after this flash of enthusiasm.</p>
+
+<p>The task was very difficult. He would have to go and take up quarters on
+the shore of the Mediterranean, on some secluded beach at Valencia or in
+Catalonia; he would have to build a cabin on the very edge of the sand
+where the water breaks with its bright reflections, and take woman after
+woman there, a hundred if it was necessary, in order to study the
+whiteness of their skin against the blue of the sea and sky, until he
+found the divine body of the Phryne he had dreamed.</p>
+
+<p>"Very difficult," murmured Renovales. "I tell you it is very difficult.
+There are so many obstacles to struggle against."</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner leaned forward with a confidential expression.</p>
+
+<p>"And besides, there's the mistress," he said in a quiet voice, looking
+at the door with a sort of fear. "I don't believe Josephina would be
+very much pleased with this picture and its pack of models."</p>
+
+<p>The master lowered his head.</p>
+
+<p>"If you only knew, Pepe! If you could see the life I lead every day!"</p>
+
+<p>"I know what it is," Cotoner hastened to say, "or rather, I can imagine.
+Don't tell me anything."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And in his haste to avoid the sad confidences of his friend, there was a
+great deal of selfishness, the desire not to disturb his peaceful calm
+with other men's sorrows that excite only a distant interest.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales spoke after a long silence. He often wondered whether an
+artist ought to be married or single. Other men, of weak, hesitating
+character needed the support of a comrade, the atmosphere of a family.</p>
+
+<p>He recalled with relish the first few months of his married life; but
+since then it had weighed on him like a chain. He did not deny the
+existence of love; he needed the sweet company of a woman in order to
+live, but with intermissions, without the endless imprisonment of common
+life. Artists like himself ought to be free, he was sure of it.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Pepe, if I had only stayed like you, master of my time and my work,
+without having to think what my family will say if they see me painting
+this or that, what great things I should have done!"</p>
+
+<p>The old man, who had failed in all his tasks, was going to say something
+when the door of the studio opened and Renovales' servant came in, a
+little man with fat red cheeks and a high voice which, according to
+Cotoner, sounded like the messenger of a monastery.</p>
+
+<p>"The countess."</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner jumped out of his armchair. Those models didn't like to see
+people in the studio. How could he get out? Renovales helped him to find
+his hat, coat and cane, which with his usual carelessness he had left in
+different corners of the studio.</p>
+
+<p>The master pushed him out of a door that led into the garden. Then, when
+he was alone, he ran to an old Venetian mirror, and looked at himself
+for a moment in its deep, bluish surface, smoothing his curly gray hair
+with his fingers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V</h2>
+
+
+<p>She came in with a great rustling of silks and laces, her least
+step accompanied by the <i>frou-frou</i> of her skirts, scattering various
+perfumes, like the breath of an exotic garden.</p>
+
+<p>"Good afternoon, <i>mon cher ma&icirc;tre</i>."</p>
+
+<p>As she looked at him through her tortoise-shell lorgnette, hanging from
+a gold chain, the gray amber of her eyes took on an insolent stare
+through the glasses, a strange expression, half caressing, half mocking.</p>
+
+<p>He must pardon her for being so late. She was sorry for her lack of
+attention, but she was the busiest woman in Madrid. The things she had
+done since luncheon! Signing and examining papers with the secretary of
+the "Women's League," a conference with the carpenter and the foreman
+(two rough fellows who fairly devoured her with their eyes), who had
+charge of putting up the booths for the great fair for the benefit of
+destitute working women; a call on the president of the Cabinet, a
+somewhat dissolute old gentleman, in spite of his gravity, who received
+her with the airs of an old-fashioned gallant, kissing her hand, as they
+used to in a minuet.</p>
+
+<p>"We have lost the afternoon, haven't we, <i>ma&icirc;tre?</i> There's hardly sun
+enough to work by now. Besides, I didn't bring my maid to help me."</p>
+
+<p>She pointed with her lorgnette to the door of an alcove that served as a
+dressing-room for the models and where she kept the evening gown and the
+flame-colored cloak in which he was painting her.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales, after looking furtively at the entrance of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> the studio,
+assumed an arrogant air of swaggering gallantry, such as he used to have
+in his youth in Rome, free and obstreperous.</p>
+
+<p>"You needn't give up on that account. If you will let me, I'll act as
+maid for you."</p>
+
+<p>The countess began to laugh loudly, throwing back her head and
+shoulders, showing her white throat that shook with merriment.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, what a good joke! And how daring the master is getting. You don't
+know anything about such things, Renovales. All you can do is paint. You
+are not in practice."</p>
+
+<p>And in her accent of subtle irony, there was something like pity for the
+artist, removed from mundane things, whose conjugal virtue everyone
+knew. This seemed to offend him for he spoke to the countess very
+sharply as he picked up the palette and prepared the colors. There was
+no need of changing her dress; he would make use of what little daylight
+remained to work on the head.</p>
+
+<p>Concha took off her hat and then, before the same Venetian mirror in
+which the painter had looked at himself, began to touch up her hair. Her
+arms curved around her golden head, while Renovales contemplated the
+grace of her back, seeing at the same time her face and breast in the
+glass. She hummed as she arranged her hair, with her eyes fixed on their
+own reflection, not letting anything distract her in this important
+operation.</p>
+
+<p>That brilliant, striking golden hair was probably bleached. The painter
+was sure of it, but it did not seem less beautiful to him on that
+account. The beauties of Venice in the olden times used to dye their
+hair.</p>
+
+<p>The countess sat down in an armchair, a short distance from the easel.
+She felt tired and as long as he was not going to paint anything but her
+face, he would not be so cruel as to make her stand, as he did on days
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> real sittings. Renovales answered with monosyllables and shrugs of
+his shoulders. That was all right&mdash;for what they were going to do. An
+afternoon lost. He would limit himself to working on her hair and her
+forehead. She might take it easy, looking anywhere she wanted to.</p>
+
+<p>The master did not feel any desire to work either. A dull anger
+disturbed him; he was irritated by the ironical accent of the countess
+who saw in him a man different from other men, a strange being who was
+incapable of acting like the insipid young men who formed her court and
+many of whom, according to common gossip, were her lovers. A strange
+woman, provoking and cold! He felt like falling on her, in his rage at
+her offence, and beating her with the same scorn that he would a low
+woman, to make her feel his manly superiority.</p>
+
+<p>Of all the ladies whose pictures he had painted, none had disturbed his
+artistic calm as she had. He felt attracted by her mad jesting, by her
+almost childish levity, and at the same time he hated her for the
+pitying air with which she treated him. For her he was a good fellow,
+but very commonplace, who by some rare caprice of Nature possessed the
+gift of painting well.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales returned this scorn by insulting her mentally. That Countess
+of Alberca was a fine one. No wonder people talked about her. Perhaps
+when she appeared in his studio, always in a hurry and out of breath,
+she came from a private interview with some one of those young bloods
+that hung around her, attracted by her still fresh, alluring maturity.</p>
+
+<p>But if Concha spoke to him with her easy freedom, telling him of the
+sadness she said she felt and allowing herself to confide in him, as if
+they were united by a long standing friendship, that was enough to make
+the master change his thoughts immediately. She was a superior<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> woman of
+ideals, condemned to live in a depressing aristocratic atmosphere. All
+the gossip about her was a calumny, a lie forged by envious people. She
+ought to be the companion of a superior man, of an artist.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales knew her history; he was proud of the friendly confidence she
+had had in him. She was the only daughter of a distinguished gentleman,
+a solemn jurist, and a violent Conservative, a minister in the most
+reactionary cabinets of the reign of Isabel II. She had been educated at
+the same school as Josephina, who in spite of the fact that Concha was
+four years her senior, retained a vivid recollection of her lively
+companion. "For mischief and deviltry you can't beat Conchita Salazar."
+It was thus that Renovales heard her name for the first time. Then when
+the artist and his wife had moved from Venice to Madrid, he learned that
+she had changed her name to that of the Countess of Alberca by marrying
+a man who might have been her father.</p>
+
+<p>He was an old courtier who performed his duties as a grandee of Spain
+with great conscientiousness, proud of his slavery to the royal family.
+His ambition was to belong to all the honorable orders of Europe and as
+soon as he was named to one of them, he had his picture painted, covered
+with scarfs and crosses, wearing the uniform of one of the traditional
+military Orders. His wife laughed to see him, so little, bald and
+solemn, with high boots, a dangling sword, his breast covered with
+trinkets, a white plumed helmet resting in his lap.</p>
+
+<p>During the life of isolation and privation with which Renovales
+struggled so courageously, the papers brought to the artist's wretched
+house the echoes of the triumphs of the "fair Countess of Alberca." Her
+name appeared in the first line of every account of an aristocratic
+function. Besides, they called her "enlightened," and talked about her
+literary culture, her classic education which she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> owed to her
+"illustrious father," now dead. And with this public news there reached
+the artist on the whispering wings of Madrid gossip other tales that
+represented the Countess of Alberca as consoling herself merrily for the
+mistake she had made in marrying an old man.</p>
+
+<p>At Court, they had taken her name from the lists, as a result of this
+reputation. Her husband took part at all the royal functions, for he did
+not have a chance every day to show off his load of honorary hardware,
+but she stayed at home, loathing these ceremonious affairs. Renovales
+had often heard her declare, dressed luxuriously and wearing costly
+jewels in her ears and on her breast, that she laughed at his set, that
+she was on the inside, she was an anarchist! And he laughed as he heard
+her, just as all men laughed at what they called the "ways" of the
+Alberca woman.</p>
+
+<p>When Renovales won success and, as a famous master, returned to those
+drawing rooms through which he had passed in his youth, he felt the
+attraction of the countess who in her character as a "woman of
+intellect," insisted on gathering celebrated men about her. Josephina
+did not accompany him in this return to society. She felt ill; contact
+with the same people in the same places tired her; she lacked the
+strength to undertake even the trips her doctors urged upon her.</p>
+
+<p>The countess enrolled the painter in her following, appearing offended
+when he failed to present himself at her house on the afternoons on
+which she received her friends. What ingratitude to show to such a
+fervent admirer! How she liked to exhibit him before her friends, as if
+he were a new jewel! "The painter Renovales, the famous master."</p>
+
+<p>At one of these afternoon receptions, the count spoke to Renovales with
+the serious air of a man who is crushed beneath his worldly honors.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Concha wants a portrait done by you, and I like to please her in every
+way. You can say when to begin. She is afraid to propose it to you and
+has commissioned me to do it. I know that your work is better than that
+of other painters. Paint her well, so that she may be pleased."</p>
+
+<p>And noticing that Renovales seemed rather offended at his patronizing
+familiarity, he added as if he were doing him another favor.</p>
+
+<p>"If you have success with Concha, you may paint my picture afterward. I
+am only waiting for the Grand Chrysanthemum of Japan. At the Government
+offices they tell me the titles will come one of these days."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales began the countess's portrait. The task was prolonged by that
+rattle-brained woman who always came late, alleging that she had been
+busy. Many days the artist did not take a stroke with his brush; they
+spent the time chatting. At other times the master listened in silence
+while she with her ceaseless volubility made fun of her friends and
+related their secret defects, their most intimate habits, their
+mysterious amours, with a kind of relish, as if all women were her
+enemies. In the midst of one of these confidential talks, she stopped
+and said with a shy expression and an ironical accent:</p>
+
+<p>"But I am probably shocking you, Mariano. You, who are a good husband, a
+staunch family-man."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales felt tempted to choke her. She was making fun of him; she
+looked on him as a man different from the rest of men, a sort of monk of
+painting. Eager to wound her, to return the blow, he interrupted once
+brutally in the midst of her merciless gossip.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, they talk about you, too, Concha. They say things that wouldn't
+be very pleasing to the count."</p>
+
+<p>He expected an outburst of anger, a protest, and all that resounded in
+the silence of the studio was a merry,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> reckless laugh that lasted a
+long time, stopping occasionally, only to begin again. Then she grew
+pensive, with the gentle sadness of women who are "misunderstood." She
+was very unhappy. She could tell him everything because he was a good
+friend. She had married when she was still a child; a terrible mistake.
+There was something else in the world besides the glare of fortune, the
+splendor of luxury and that count's coronet, which had stirred her
+school-girl's mind.</p>
+
+<p>"We have the right to a little love, and if not love, to a little joy.
+Don't you think so, Mariano?"</p>
+
+<p>Of course he thought so. And he declared it in such a way, looking at
+Concha with alarming eyes, that she finally laughed at his frankness and
+threatened him with her finger.</p>
+
+<p>"Take care, master. Don't forget that Josephina is my friend and if you
+go astray, I'll tell her everything."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales was irritated at her disposition, always restless and
+capricious as a bird's, quite as likely to sit down beside him in warm
+intimacy as to flit away with tormenting banter.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes she was aggressive, teasing the artist from her very first
+words, as had just happened that afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>They were silent for a long time&mdash;he, painting with an absent-minded
+air, she watching the movement of the brush, buried in an armchair in
+the sweet calm of rest.</p>
+
+<p>But the Alberca woman was incapable of remaining silent long. Little by
+little her usual chatter began, paying no attention to the painter's
+silence, talking to relieve the convent-like stillness of the studio
+with her words and laughter.</p>
+
+<p>The painter heard the story of her labors as president of the "Women's
+League," of the great things she meant to do in the holy undertaking for
+the emancipation of the sex. And, in passing, led on by her desire of
+ridiculing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> all women, she gaily made sport of her co-workers in the
+great project; unknown literary women, school teachers, whose lives were
+embittered by their ugliness, painters of flowers and doves, a throng of
+poor women with extravagant hats and clothes that looked as though they
+were hung on a bean-pole; feminine Bohemians, rebellious and rabid
+against their lot, who were proud to have her as their leader and who
+made it a point to call her "Countess" in sonorous tones at every other
+word, in order to flatter themselves with the distinction of this
+friendship. The Alberca woman was greatly amused at her following of
+admirers; she laughed at their intolerance and their proposals.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know what it is," said Renovales breaking his long silence. "You
+want to annihilate us, to reign over man, whom you hate."</p>
+
+<p>The countess laughed at the recollection of the fierce feminism of some
+of her acolytes. As most of them were homely, they hated feminine beauty
+as a sign of weakness. They wanted the woman of the future to be without
+hips, without breasts, straight, bony, muscular, fitted for all sorts of
+manual labor, free from the slavery of love and reproduction. "Down with
+feminine fat!"</p>
+
+<p>"What a frightful idea! Don't you think so, Mariano?" she continued.
+"Woman, straight in front and straight behind, with her hair cut short
+and her hands hardened, competing with men in all sorts of struggles!
+And they call that emancipation! I know what men are; if they saw us
+looking like that, in a few days they would be beating us."</p>
+
+<p>No, she was not one of them. She wanted to see a woman triumph, but by
+increasing still more her charm and her fascination. If they took away
+her beauty what would she have left? She wanted her to be man's equal in
+intelligence, his superior by the magic of her beauty.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I don't hate men, Mariano, I am very much a woman, and I like them.
+What's the use of denying it?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know it, Concha, I know it," said the painter, with a malicious
+meaning.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you know? Lies, gossip that people tell about me because I am
+not a hypocrite and am not always wearing a gloomy expression."</p>
+
+<p>And led on by that desire for sympathy that all women of questionable
+reputation experience, she spoke once more of her unpleasant situation.
+Renovales knew the count, a good man in spite of his hobbies, who
+thought of nothing but his honorary trinkets. She did everything for
+him, watched out for his comfort, but he was nothing to her. She lacked
+the most important thing&mdash;heart-love.</p>
+
+<p>As she spoke she looked up, with a longing idealism that would have made
+anyone but Renovales smile.</p>
+
+<p>"In this situation," she said slowly, looking into space, "it isn't
+strange that a woman seeks happiness where she can find it. But I am
+very unhappy, Mariano; I don't know what love is. I have never loved."</p>
+
+<p>Ah, she would have been happy, if she had married a man who was her
+superior. To be the companion of a great artist, of a scholar, would
+have meant happiness for her. The men who gathered around her in her
+drawing-rooms were younger and stronger than the poor count, but
+mentally they were even weaker than he. There was no such thing as
+virtue in the world, she admitted that; she did not dare to lie to a
+friend like the painter. She had had her diversions, her whims, just as
+many other women who passed as impregnable models of virtue, but she
+always came out of these misdoings with a feeling of disenchantment and
+disgust. She knew that love was a reality for other women, but she had
+never succeeded in finding it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Renovales had stopped painting. The sunlight no longer came in through
+the wide window. The panes took on a violet opaqueness. Twilight filled
+the studio, and in the shadows there shone dimly like dying sparks, here
+the corner of a picture frame, beyond the old gold of an embroidered
+banner, in the corners the pummel of a sword, the pearl inlay of a
+cabinet.</p>
+
+<p>The painter sat down beside the countess, sinking into the perfumed
+atmosphere which surrounded her with a sort of nimbus of keen
+voluptuousness.</p>
+
+<p>He, too, was unhappy. He said it sincerely, believing honestly in the
+lady's melancholy despair. Something was lacking in his life; he was
+alone in the world. And as he saw an expression of surprise on Concha's
+face, he pounded his chest energetically.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, alone. He knew what she was going to say. He had his wife, his
+daughter. About Milita he did not want to talk; he worshiped her; she
+was his joy. When he felt tired out with work, it gave him a sweet sense
+of rest to put his arms around her neck. But he was still too young to
+be satisfied with this joy of a father's love. He longed for something
+more and he could not find it in the companion of his life, always ill,
+with her nerves constantly on edge. Besides, she did not understand him.
+She never would understand him; she was a burden who was crushing his
+talent.</p>
+
+<p>Their union was based merely on friendship, on mutual consideration for
+the suffering they had undergone together. He, too, had been deceived in
+taking for love what was only an impulse of youthful attraction. He
+needed a true passion; to live close to a soul that was akin to his, to
+love a woman who was his superior, who could understand him and
+encourage him in his bold projects, who could sacrifice her commonplace
+prejudices to the demands of art.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He spoke vehemently, with his eyes fixed on Concha's eyes that shone
+with light from the window.</p>
+
+<p>But Renovales was interrupted by a cruel, ironical laugh, while the
+countess pushed back her chair, as if to avoid the artist who slowly
+leaned forward toward her.</p>
+
+<p>"Look out, you're slipping, Mariano! I see it coming. A little more and
+you would have made me a confession. Heavens! These men! You can't talk
+to them like a good friend, show them any confidence without their
+beginning to talk love on the spot. If I would let you, in less than a
+minute you would tell me that I am your ideal, that you worship me."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales, who had moved away from her, recovering his sternness, felt
+cut by that mocking laugh and said in a quiet tone:</p>
+
+<p>"And what if it were true? What if I loved you?"</p>
+
+<p>The laugh of the countess rang out again, but forced, false, with a tone
+that seemed to tear the artist's breast.</p>
+
+<p>"Just what I expected! The confession I spoke of! That's the third one
+I've received to-day. But isn't it possible to talk with a man of
+anything but love?"</p>
+
+<p>She was already on her feet, looking around for her hat, for she could
+not remember where she had left it.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm going, <i>cher ma&icirc;tre</i>. It isn't safe to stay here. I'll try to come
+earlier next time so that the twilight won't catch us. It's a
+treacherous hour; the moment of the greatest follies."</p>
+
+<p>The painter objected to her leaving. Her carriage had not yet come. She
+could wait a few minutes longer. He promised to be quiet, not to talk to
+her, as long as it seemed to displease her.</p>
+
+<p>The countess remained, but she would not sit down in the chair. She
+walked around the studio for a few moments and finally opened the organ
+that stood near the window.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Let's have a little music; that will quiet us. You, Mariano, sit still
+as a mouse in your chair and don't come near me. Be a good boy now."</p>
+
+<p>Her fingers rested on the keys; her feet moved the pedals and the
+<i>Largo</i> of Handel, grave, mystic, dreamy, swelled softly through the
+studio. The melody filled the wide room, already wrapped in shadows, it
+made its way through the tapestries, prolonging its winged whisper
+through the other two studios, as though it were the song of an organ
+played by invisible hands in a deserted cathedral at the mysterious hour
+of dusk.</p>
+
+<p>Concha felt stirred with feminine sentimentality, that superficial,
+whimsical, sensitiveness that made her friends look on her as a great
+artist. The music filled her with tenderness; she strove to keep back
+the tears that came to her eyes,&mdash;why, she could not tell.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she stopped playing and looked around anxiously. The painter
+was behind her, she fancied she felt his breath on her neck. She wanted
+to protest, to make him draw back with one of her cruel laughs, but she
+could not.</p>
+
+<p>"Mariano," she murmured, "go sit down, be a good boy and mind me. If you
+don't I'll be cross."</p>
+
+<p>But she did not move; after turning half way around on the stool, she
+remained facing the window with one elbow resting on the keys.</p>
+
+<p>They were silent for a long time; she in this position, he watching her
+face that now was only a white spot in the deepening shadow.</p>
+
+<p>The panes of the window took on a bluish opaqueness. The branches of the
+garden cut them like sinuous, shifting lines of ink. In the deep calm of
+the studio the creaking of the furniture could be heard, that breathing
+of wood, of dust, of objects in the silence and shadow.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Both of them seem to be captivated by the mystery of the hour, as if the
+death of day acted as an an&aelig;sthetic on their minds. They felt lulled in
+a vague, sweet dream.</p>
+
+<p>She trembled with pleasure.</p>
+
+<p>"Mariano, go away," she said slowly, as if it cost her an effort. "This
+is so pleasant, I feel as if I were in a bath, a bath that penetrates to
+my very soul. But it isn't right. Turn on the lights, master. Light!
+Light! This isn't proper."</p>
+
+<p>Mariano did not listen to her. He had bent over her, taking her hand
+that was cold, unfeeling, as if it did not notice the pressure of his.</p>
+
+<p>Then, with a sudden start, he kissed it, almost bit it.</p>
+
+<p>The countess seemed to awake and stood up, proudly, angrily.</p>
+
+<p>"That's childish, Mariano. It isn't fair."</p>
+
+<p>But in a moment she laughed with her cruel laugh, as if she pitied the
+confusion that Renovales showed when he saw her anger. "You are
+pardoned, master. A kiss on the hand means nothing. It is the
+conventional thing. Many men kiss my hand."</p>
+
+<p>And this indifference was a bitter torment for the artist, who
+considered that his kiss was a sign of possession.</p>
+
+<p>The countess continued to search in the darkness, repeating in an
+irritated voice:</p>
+
+<p>"Light, turn on the light. Where in the world is the button?"</p>
+
+<p>The light was turned on without Mariano's moving, before she found the
+button she was looking for. Three clusters of electric lights flashed
+out on the ceiling of the studio, and their crowns of white needles,
+brought out of the shadows the golden picture frames, the bril<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>liant
+tapestries, the shining arms, the showy furniture and the bright-colored
+paintings.</p>
+
+<p>They both blinked, blinded by the sudden brightness.</p>
+
+<p>"Good evening," said a honeyed voice from the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>"Josephina!"</p>
+
+<p>The countess ran toward her, embracing her effusively, kissing her
+bright red, emaciated cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"How dark you were," continued Josephina with a smile that Renovales
+knew well.</p>
+
+<p>Concha fairly stunned her with her flow of chatter. The illustrious
+master had refused to light up, he liked the twilight. An artist's whim!
+They had been talking about their dear Josephina, while she was waiting
+for her carriage to come. And as she said this, she kept kissing the
+little woman, drawing back a little to look at her better, repeating
+impetuously:</p>
+
+<p>"My, how pretty you are to-day. You look better than you did three days
+ago."</p>
+
+<p>Josephina continued to smile. She thanked her. Her carriage was waiting
+at the door. The servant had told her when she came downstairs,
+attracted by the distant sound of the organ.</p>
+
+<p>The countess seemed to be in a hurry to leave. She suddenly remembered a
+host of things she had to do, she enumerated the people who were waiting
+for her at home. Josephina helped her to put on her hat and veil and
+even then the countess gave her several good-by kisses through the veil.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, <i>ma ch&egrave;re</i>. Good-by, <i>mignonne</i>. Do you remember our school
+days? How happy we were there! Good-by, <i>ma&icirc;tre</i>."</p>
+
+<p>She stopped at the door to kiss Josephina once more.</p>
+
+<p>And finally, before she disappeared, she exclaimed in the querulous tone
+of a victim who wants sympathy:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I envy you, <i>ch&egrave;rie</i>. You, at least, are happy. You have found a
+husband who worships you. Master, take lots of care of her. Be good to
+her so that she may get well and pretty. Take care of her or we shall
+quarrel."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI</h2>
+
+
+<p>Renovales had finished reading the evening papers in bed as was his
+custom, and before putting out the light he looked at his wife.</p>
+
+<p>She was awake. Above the fold of the sheet he saw her eyes, unusually
+wide open, fixed on him with a hostile stare, and the little tails of
+her hair, that stuck out under the lace of her night-cap straight and
+sedate.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you asleep?" the painter asked in an affectionate tone, in which
+there was some anxiety.</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>And after this hard monosyllable, she turned over in the bed with her
+back to him.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales remained in the darkness, with his eyes open, somewhat
+disturbed, almost afraid of that body, hidden under the same sheet,
+lying a short distance from him, which avoided touching him, shrinking
+with manifest repulsion.</p>
+
+<p>Poor little girl! Renovales' better nature felt tormented with a painful
+remorse. His conscience was a cruel beast that had awakened, angry and
+implacable, tearing him with scornful teeth. The events of the afternoon
+meant nothing, a moment of thoughtlessness, of weakness. Surely the
+countess would not remember it and he, for his part, was determined not
+to slip again.</p>
+
+<p>A pretty situation for a father of a family, for a man whose youth was
+past, compromising himself in a love affair, getting melancholy in the
+twilight, kissing a white hand like an enamored troubadour! Good God!
+How<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> his friends would have laughed to see him in that posture! He must
+purge himself of that romanticism which sometimes mastered him. Every
+man must follow his fate, accepting life as he found it. He was born to
+be virtuous, he must put up with the relative peace of his domestic
+life, must accept its limited pleasures as a compensation for the
+suffering his wife's illness caused him. He would be content with the
+feasts of his thought, with the revels in beauty at the banquets served
+by his fancy. He would keep his flesh faithful though it amounted to
+perpetual privation. Poor Josephina! His remorse at a moment of weakness
+which he considered a crime, impelled him to draw closer to her, as if
+he sought in her warmth and contact a mute forgiveness.</p>
+
+<p>Her body, burning with a slow fever, drew away as it felt his touch, it
+shriveled like those timid molluscs that shrink and hide at the least
+touch. She was awake. He could not hear her breathing; she seemed dead
+in the profound darkness, but he fancied her with her eyes open, a scowl
+on her forehead and he felt the fear of a man who has a presentiment of
+danger in the mystery of the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales too remained motionless, taking care not to touch again that
+form which silently repelled him. The sincerity of his repentance
+brought him a sort of consolation. Never again would he forget his wife,
+his daughter, his respectability.</p>
+
+<p>He would give up forever the longings of youth, that recklessness, that
+thirst for enjoying all the pleasures of life. His lot was cast; he
+would continue to be what he always had been. He would paint portraits
+and everything that was given to him as a commission; he would please
+the public; he would make more money, he would adapt his art to meet his
+wife's jealous de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>mands, that she might live in peace; he would scoff at
+that phantom of human ambition which men call glory. Glory! A lottery,
+where the only chance for a prize depended on the tastes of people still
+to be born! Who knew what the artistic inclinations of the future would
+be? Perhaps it would appreciate what he was now producing with such
+loathing; perhaps it would laugh scornfully at what he wanted to paint.
+The only thing of importance was to live in peace, as long as he could
+be surrounded by happiness. His daughter would marry. Perhaps her
+husband would be his favorite pupil, that Soldevilla, so polite, so
+courteous, who was mad over the mischievous Milita. If it was not he, it
+would be L&oacute;pez de Sosa, a crazy fellow, in love with his automobiles,
+who pleased Josephina more than the pupil because he had not committed
+the sin of showing talent and devoting himself to painting. He would
+have grandchildren, his beard would grow white, he would have the
+majesty of an Eternal Father and Josephina, cared for by him, restored
+to health by an atmosphere of affection, would grow old too, freed from
+her nervous troubles.</p>
+
+<p>The painter felt allured by this picture of patriarchal happiness. He
+would go out of the world without having tasted the best fruits which
+life offers, but still with the peace of a soul that does not know the
+great heat of passion.</p>
+
+<p>Lulled by these illusions, the artist was sinking into sleep. He saw in
+the darkness, the image of his calm old age, with rosy wrinkles and
+silvery hair, at his side a sprightly little old lady, healthy and
+attractive, with wavy hair, and around them a group of children, many
+children, some of them with their fingers in their noses, others rolling
+on their backs on the floor, like playful kittens, the older ones with
+pencils in their hands, mak<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>ing caricatures of the old couple and all
+shouting in a chorus of loving cries: "Grandpa, dear! Pretty grandma!"</p>
+
+<p>In his sleepy fancy, the picture grew indistinct and was blotted out. He
+no longer saw the figures, but the loving cry continued to sound in his
+ears, dying away in the distance.</p>
+
+<p>Then it began to increase again, drew slowly nearer, but it was a
+complaint, a howl like that of the victim that feels the sacrificer's
+knife at its throat.</p>
+
+<p>The artist, terrified by this moan, thought that some dark animal, some
+monster of the night was tossing beside him, brushing him with its
+tentacles, pushing him with the bony points of its joints.</p>
+
+<p>He awoke and with his brain still cloudy with sleep, the first sensation
+he experienced was a tremble of fear and surprise, reaching from his
+head to his feet. The invisible monster was beside him, dying, kicking
+violently, sticking him with its angular body. The howl tore the
+darkness like a death rattle.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales, aroused by his fear, awoke completely. That cry came from
+Josephina. His wife was tossing about in the bed, shrieking while she
+gasped for breath.</p>
+
+<p>The electric button snapped and the white, hard light of the lamp showed
+the little woman in the disorder of her nervous outbreak; her weak limbs
+painfully convulsed, her eyes, staring, dull with an uncanny vacancy;
+her mouth contracted, dripping with foam.</p>
+
+<p>The husband, dazed at this awakening, tried to take her in his arms, to
+hold her gently against him, as if his warmth might restore her calm.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me&mdash;alone," she cried brokenly. "Let go of me. I hate you!"</p>
+
+<p>And though she asked him to let go of her, she was the one who clung to
+him, digging her fingers into his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> throat, as if she wanted to strangle
+him. Renovates, insensible to this clutch which made little impression
+on his strong neck, murmured with sad kindness:</p>
+
+<p>"Squeeze! Don't be afraid of hurting me. Relieve your feelings!"</p>
+
+<p>Her hands, tired out with this useless pressure on that muscular flesh,
+relaxed their grasp with a sort of dejection. The outbreak lasted for
+some time, but tears came and she lay exhausted, inert, without any
+other signs of life than the heaving of her breast and a constant stream
+of tears.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales had jumped out of bed, moving about the room in his night
+clothing, searching on all sides, without knowing what he was looking
+for, murmuring loving words to calm his wife.</p>
+
+<p>She stopped crying, struggling to enunciate each syllable between her
+sobs. She spoke with her head buried in her arms. The painter stopped to
+listen to her, astounded at the coarse words that came from her lips, as
+if the grief that stirred her soul had set afloat all the shameful,
+filthy words she had heard in the streets that were hidden in the depth
+of her memory.</p>
+
+<p>"The &mdash;&mdash;!" (And here she uttered the classic word, naturally, as if she
+had spoken thus all her life.) "The shameless woman! The &mdash;&mdash;!"</p>
+
+<p>And she continued to volley a string of interjections which shocked her
+husband to hear them coming from those lips.</p>
+
+<p>"But whom are you talking about? Who is it?"</p>
+
+<p>She, as if she were only waiting for his question, sat up in bed, got
+onto her knees, looking at him fixedly, shaking her head on her delicate
+neck, so that the short, straight locks of hair whirled around it.</p>
+
+<p>"Whom do you suppose? The Alberca woman. That<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> peacock! Look surprised!
+You don't know what I mean! Poor thing!"</p>
+
+<p>Renovales expected this, but when he heard it, he assumed an injured
+expression, fortified by his determination to reform and by the
+certainty that he was telling the truth. He raised his hand to his heart
+in a tragic attitude, throwing back his shock of hair, not noticing the
+absurdity of his appearance that was reflected in the bedroom mirror.</p>
+
+<p>"Josephina, I swear by all that I love most in the world that your
+suspicions are not true. I have had nothing to do with Concha. I swear
+it by our daughter!"</p>
+
+<p>The little woman became more irritated.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't swear, don't lie, don't name my daughter. You deceiver! You
+hypocrite! You are all alike!"</p>
+
+<p>Did he think she was a fool? She knew everything that was going on
+around her. He was a rake, a false husband, she had discovered it a few
+months after their marriage; a Bohemian without any other education than
+the low associations of his class. And the woman was as bad; the worst
+in Madrid. There was a reason why people laughed at the count
+everywhere. Mariano and Concha understood each other; birds of a
+feather; they made fun of her in her own house, in the dark of the
+studio.</p>
+
+<p>"She is your mistress," she said with cold anger. "Come now, admit it.
+Repeat all those shameless things about the rights of love and joy that
+you talk about to your friends in the studio, those infamous hypocrisies
+to justify your scorn for the family, for marriage, for everything. Have
+the courage of your convictions."</p>
+
+<p>But Renovales, overwhelmed by this fierce outpouring of words that fell
+on him like a rain of blows, could only repeat, with his hand on his
+heart and the expres<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span>sion of noble resignation of a man who suffers an
+injustice:</p>
+
+<p>"I am innocent. I swear it. Your suspicions are absolutely groundless."</p>
+
+<p>And walking around to the other side of the bed, he tried again to take
+Josephina in his arms, thinking he could calm her, now that she seemed
+less furious and that her angry words were broken by tears.</p>
+
+<p>It was a useless effort. The delicate form slipped out of his hands,
+repelling them with a feeling of horror and repugnance.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me alone. Don't touch me. I loathe you."</p>
+
+<p>Her husband was mistaken if he thought that she was Concha's enemy.
+Pshaw! She knew what women were. She even admitted (since he was so
+insistent in his protestations of innocence) that there was nothing
+between them. But if so, it was due solely to Concha&mdash;she had plenty of
+admirers and, besides, her old time friendship would impel her not to
+embitter Josephina's life. Concha was the one who had resisted and not
+he.</p>
+
+<p>"I know you. You know that I can guess your thoughts, that I read in
+your face. You are faithful because you are a coward, because you have
+lacked an opportunity. But your mind is loaded with foul ideas; I detest
+your spirit."</p>
+
+<p>And before he could protest, his wife attacked him; anew, pouring out in
+one breath all the observations she had made, weighing his words and
+deeds with the subtlety of a diseased imagination.</p>
+
+<p>She threw in his face the expression of rapture in his eyes when he saw
+beautiful women sit down before his easel to have their portraits
+painted; his praise of the throat of one, the shoulders of another; the
+almost religious unction with which he examined the photographs and
+engravings of naked beauties, painted by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> other artists whom he would
+like to imitate in his licentious impulses.</p>
+
+<p>"If I should leave you! If I should disappear! Your studio would be a
+brothel, no decent person could enter it; you would always have some
+woman stripped in there, painting some disgraceful picture of her."</p>
+
+<p>And in the tremble of her irritated voice there was revealed the anger,
+the bitter disappointment she had experienced in the constant contact
+with this cult of beauty, that paid no attention to her, who was aged
+before her time, sickly, with the ugliness of physical misery, whom each
+one of these enthusiastic homages wounded like a reproach, marking the
+abyss between her sad condition and the ideal that filled the mind of
+her husband.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think I don't know what you are thinking about. I laugh at your
+fidelity. A lie! Hypocrisy! As you get older, a mad desire is mastering
+you. If you could, if you had the courage, you would run after these
+creatures of beautiful flesh that you praise so highly. You are
+commonplace. There's nothing in you but coarseness and materialism.
+Form! Flesh! And they call that artistic? I'd have done better to marry
+a shoemaker, one of those honest, simple men that takes his poor little
+wife to dinner in a restaurant on Sunday and worships her, not knowing
+any other."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales began to feel irritated at this attack that was no longer
+based on his actions but on his thoughts. That was worse than the
+Inquisition. She had spied on him constantly; always on the watch, she
+picked up his least words and expressions, she penetrated his thoughts,
+making his inclinations and enthusiasms a subject for jealousy.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop, Josephina. That's despicable. I won't be able to think, to
+produce. You spy on me and pursue me even in my art."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>She shrugged her shoulders scornfully. His art! She scoffed at it.</p>
+
+<p>And she began again to insult painting, repenting that she had joined
+her lot to an artist's. Men like him ought not to marry respectable
+women, what people call "homebodies." Their fate was to remain single or
+to join with unscrupulous women who were in love with their own form and
+were capable of exhibiting it in the street, taking pride in their
+nakedness.</p>
+
+<p>"I used to love you; did you know it?" she said coldly. "I used to love
+you, but I no longer love you. What's the use? I know that even if you
+swore to me on your knees, you would never be faithful to me. You might
+be tied to my apron strings but your thoughts would go wandering off to
+caress those beauties you worship. You've got a perfect harem in your
+head. I think I am living alone with you and when I look at you, the
+house is peopled with women that surround me, that fill everything and
+mock at me; all fair, like children of the devil all naked, like
+temptations. Let me alone, Mariano, don't come near me. I don't want to
+see you. Put out the light."</p>
+
+<p>And seeing that the artist did not obey her command, she pressed the
+button herself. The cracking of her bones could be heard as she wrapped
+herself up in the bed-clothes.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales was left in utter darkness, and feeling his way, he got into
+bed too. He no longer implored, he remained silent, angry. The tender
+compassion that made him put up with his wife's nervous attacks had
+disappeared. What more did she expect of him? How far was it going to
+go? He lived the life of a recluse, restraining his healthy passion,
+keeping a chaste fidelity out of habit and respect, seeking an outlet in
+the ardent vagaries of his fancy, and even that was a crime!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> With the
+acumen of a sick woman, she saw within him, divining his ideas,
+following their course, tearing off the veil behind which he concealed
+those feasts of fancy with which he passed his solitary hours. This
+persecution reached even his brain. He could not patiently endure the
+jealousy of that woman who was embittered by the loss of her youthful
+freshness.</p>
+
+<p>She began her weeping again in the darkness. She sobbed convulsively,
+tossing the clothes with the heaving of her breast.</p>
+
+<p>His anger made him insensible and hard.</p>
+
+<p>"Groan, you poor wretch," he thought with a sort of relish. "Weep till
+you ruin yourself. I won't be the one to say a word."</p>
+
+<p>Josephina, tired out by his silence, interjected words amid her sobs.
+People made fun of her. She was a constant laughing-stock. How his
+friends who hung on his words, and the ladies who visited him in his
+studio, laughed when they heard him enthusiastically praising beauty in
+the presence of his sickly, broken-down wife! What did she amount to in
+that house, that terrible pantheon, that home of sorrow? A poor
+housekeeper who watched out for the artist's comforts. And he thought
+that he was fulfilling his duty by not keeping a mistress, by staying at
+home, but still abusing her with his words that made her an object of
+derision. If her mother were only alive! If her brothers were not so
+selfish, wandering about the world from embassy to embassy, satisfied
+with life, paying no attention to her letters filled with complaints,
+thinking she was insane because she was not contented with a
+distinguished husband and with wealth!</p>
+
+<p>Renovales, in the darkness, lifted his hands to his forehead in despair,
+infuriated at the sing-song of her unjust words.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Her mother!" he thought. "It's lucky that intolerable old dame is under
+the sod forever. Her brothers! A crowd of rakes that are always asking
+me for something whenever they get a chance. Heavens! Give me the
+patience to stand this woman, the calm resignation to keep a cool head
+and not to forget that I am a man!"</p>
+
+<p>He scorned her mentally in order to maintain his indifference in this
+way. Bah! A woman! and a sick one! Every man carries his cross and his
+was Josephina.</p>
+
+<p>But she, as if she penetrated his thoughts, stopped crying and spoke to
+him slowly in a voice that shook with cruel irony.</p>
+
+<p>"You need not expect anything from the Alberca woman," she said suddenly
+with feminine incoherence. "I warn you that she has worshipers by the
+dozen, young and stylish, too, something that counts more with women
+than talent."</p>
+
+<p>"What difference does that make to me?" Renovales' voice roared in the
+darkness with an outbreak of wrath.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm telling you, so that you won't fool yourself. Master, you are going
+to suffer a failure. You are very old, my good man, the years are going
+by. So old and so ugly that if you had looked the way you do when I met
+you, I should never have been your wife in spite of all your glory."</p>
+
+<p>After this thrust, satisfied and calm, she seemed to go to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The master remained motionless, lying on his back with his head resting
+on his arms and his eyes wide open, seeing in the darkness a host of red
+spots that spread out in ceaseless rotation, forming floating, fiery
+rings. His wrath had set his nerves on edge; the final thrust made sleep
+impossible. He felt restless, wide-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>awake after this cruel shock to his
+pride. He thought that in his bed, close to him, he had his worst enemy.
+He hated that frail form that he could touch with the slightest
+movement, as if it contained the rancor of all the adversaries he had
+met in life.</p>
+
+<p>Old! Contemptible! Inferior to those young bloods that swarmed around
+the Alberca woman; he, a man known all over Europe, and in whose
+presence all the young ladies that painted fans and water-colors of
+birds and flowers, grew pale with emotion, looking at him with
+worshiping eyes!</p>
+
+<p>"I will soon show you, you poor woman," he thought, while a cruel laugh
+shook silently in the darkness. "You'll soon see whether glory means
+anything and people find me as old as you believe."</p>
+
+<p>With boyish joy, he recalled the twilight scene, the kiss on the
+countess's hand, her gentle abandon, that mingling of resistance and
+pleasure which opened the way for him to go farther. He enjoyed these
+memories with a relish of vengeance.</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards, his body, as he moved, touched Josephina, who seemed to be
+asleep, and he felt a sort of repugnance as if he had rubbed against a
+hostile creature.</p>
+
+<p>She was his enemy; she had distorted and ruined his life as an artist,
+she had saddened his life as a man. Now he believed that he might have
+produced the most remarkable works, if he had not known that little
+woman who crushed him with her weight. Her silent censure, her prying
+eyes, that narrow, petty morality of a well-educated girl, blocked his
+course and made him turn out of his way. Her fits of temper, her nervous
+attacks, made him lose his bearings, belittling him, robbing him of his
+strength for work. Must he always live like this? The thought of the
+long years before him filled him with horror, the long road that life
+offered him,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> monotonous, dusty, rough, without a shadow or a resting
+place, a painful journey lacking enthusiasm and ardor, pulling at the
+chain of duty, at the end of which dragged the enemy, always fretful,
+always unjust, with the selfish cruelty of disease, spying on him with
+searching eyes in the hours when his mind was off its guard, while he
+slept, violating his secrecy, forcing his immobility, robbing him of his
+most intimate ideas, only to parade them before his eyes later with the
+insolence of a successful thief. And that was what his life was to be!
+God! No, it was better to die.</p>
+
+<p>Then in the black recesses of his brain there rose, like a blue spark of
+infernal gleam, a thought, a desire, that made a chill of terror and
+surprise run over his body.</p>
+
+<p>"If she would only die!"</p>
+
+<p>Why not? Always ill, always sad, she seemed to darken his mind with the
+wings that beat ominously. He had a right to liberty, to break the
+chain, because he was the stronger. He had spent his life in the
+struggle for glory, and glory was a delusion, if it brought only cold
+respect from his fellows, if it could not be exchanged for something
+more positive. Many years of intense existence were left; he could still
+exult in a host of pleasures, he could still live, like some artists
+whom he admired, intoxicated with worldly joys, working in mad freedom.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, if she would only die!"</p>
+
+<p>He recalled books he had read, in which other imaginary people had
+desired another's death that they might be able to satisfy more fully
+their appetites and passions.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he felt as though he were awakening from a bad dream, as though
+he were throwing off an overwhelming nightmare. Poor Josephina! His
+thought filled him with horror, he felt the infernal desire burn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span>ing his
+conscience, like a hot iron that throws off a shower of sparks when
+touched. It was not tenderness that made him turn again towards his
+companion; not that; his old animosity remained. But he thought of her
+years of sacrifice, of the privations she had suffered, following him in
+the struggle with misery, without a complaint, without a protest, in the
+pains of motherhood, in the nursing of her daughter, that Milita who
+seemed to have stolen all the strength of her body and perhaps was the
+cause of her decline. How terrible to wish for her death! He hoped that
+she would live. He would bear everything with the patience of duty. She
+die? Never, he would rather die himself.</p>
+
+<p>But in vain did he struggle to forget the thought. The atrocious,
+monstrous desire, once awakened, resisted, refused to recede, to hide,
+to die in the windings of his brain whence it had arisen. In vain did he
+repent his villainy, or feel ashamed of his cruel idea, striving to
+crush it forever. It seemed as though a second personality had arisen
+within him, rebellious to his commands, opposed to his conscience, hard
+and indifferent to his sympathetic scruples, and this personality, this
+power, continued to sing in his ear with a merry accent, as if it
+promised him all the pleasures of life.</p>
+
+<p>"If she would only die! Eh, master? If she would only die!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+<h2><a name="PART_II" id="PART_II"></a>PART II</h2>
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="Ia" id="Ia"></a>I</h2>
+
+
+<p>At the coming of spring L&oacute;pez de Sosa, "the intrepid sportsman," as
+Cotoner called him, appeared at Renovales' house every afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>Outside the entrance gate stood his eighty-horsepower automobile, his
+latest acquisition, of which he was intensely proud, a huge green car,
+that started and backed under the hand of the chauffeur while its owner
+was crossing the garden of the painter's house.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales saw him enter the studio, in a blue suit with a shining visor
+over his eyes, affecting the resolute bearing of a sailor or an
+explorer.</p>
+
+<p>"Good afternoon, Don Mariano, I have come for the ladies."</p>
+
+<p>And Milita came down stairs in a long gray coat, with a white cap,
+around which she wound a long blue veil. After her came her mother clad
+in the same fashion, small and insignificant beside the girl, who seemed
+to overwhelm her with her health and grace.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales approved of these trips. Josephina's legs were troubling her;
+a sudden weakness sometimes kept her in her chair for days at a time.
+Finding any sort of movement difficult, she liked to ride motionless in
+that car that fairly ate up space, reaching distant suburbs of Madrid
+without the least effort, as if she had not moved from the house.</p>
+
+<p>"Have a good time," said the painter with a sort of joy at the prospect
+of being left alone, completely alone,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> without the disturbance of
+feeling his wife's hostility near him. "I entrust them to you,
+Rafaelito; be careful, now."</p>
+
+<p>And Rafaelito assumed an expression of protest, as if he were shocked
+that anyone could doubt his skill. There was no danger with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you coming, Don Mariano? Lay down your brushes for a while.
+We're only going to the Pardo."</p>
+
+<p>The painter declined; he had a great deal to do. He knew what it was,
+and he did not like to go so fast. There was no pleasure in swallowing
+space with your eyes almost closed, unable to see anything but a hazy
+blur of the scenery, amid clouds of dust and crushed stone. He preferred
+to look at the landscape calmly, without haste, with the reflective
+quiet of the student. Besides he was out of place in things that did not
+belong to his time; he was getting old and these frightful novelties did
+not agree with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, papa."</p>
+
+<p>Milita, lifting her veil, put out her red, tempting lips, showing her
+bright teeth as she smiled. After this kiss came the other, formal and
+cold, exchanged with the indifference of habit, without any novelty
+except that Josephina's mouth drew back from his, as if she wanted to
+avoid any contact with him.</p>
+
+<p>They went out, the mother leaning on Rafaelito's arm with a sort of
+languor, as if she could hardly drag her weak body,&mdash;her pale face
+unrelieved by the least sign of blood.</p>
+
+<p>When Renovales found himself alone in the studio he would feel as happy
+as a school-boy on a holiday. He worked with a lighter touch, he roared
+out old songs, delighting to listen to the echoes that his voice
+awakened in the high-studded rooms. Often when Cotoner came in, he would
+surprise him by the serene shamelessness<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span> with which he sang some one of
+the licentious songs he had learned in Rome, and the painter of the
+Popes, smiling like a faun, joined in the chorus, applauding at the end
+these ribald verses of the studio.</p>
+
+<p>Tekli, the Hungarian, who sometimes spent an afternoon with him, had
+departed for his native land with his copy of <i>Las Meninas</i>, but not
+before lifting Renovales' hands several times to his heart, with
+extravagant terms of affection and calling him "noble master." The
+portrait of the Countess of Alberca was no longer in the studio; in a
+glittering frame it hung on the walls of the illustrious lady's
+drawing-room, where it received the worship of her admirers.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes of an afternoon when the ladies had left the studio and the
+dull mumble of the car and the tooting of the horn had died away, the
+master and his friend would talk of L&oacute;pez de Sosa. A good fellow,
+somewhat foolish, but well-meaning; this was the judgment of Renovales
+and his old friend. He was proud of his mustache that gave him a certain
+likeness to the German emperor, and when he sat down, he took care to
+show his hands, by placing them prominently on his knees, in order that
+everyone might appreciate their vigorous hugeness, the prominent veins,
+and the strong fingers, all this with the na&iuml;ve satisfaction of a
+ditch-digger. His conversation always turned on feats of strength and
+before the two artists he strutted as if he belonged to another race,
+talking of his prowess as a fencer, of his triumphs in the bouts, of the
+weights he could lift with the slightest effort, of the number of chairs
+he could jump over without touching one of them. Often he interrupted
+the two painters when they were eulogizing the great masters of art, to
+tell them of the latest victory of some celebrated driver in the contest
+for a coveted cup. He knew by heart the names<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span> of all the European
+champions who had won the immortal laurel, in running, jumping, killing
+pigeons, boxing or fencing.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales had seen him come into the studio one afternoon, trembling
+with excitement, his eyes flashing, and showing a telegram.</p>
+
+<p>"Don Mariano, I have a Mercedes; they have just announced its shipment."</p>
+
+<p>The painter looked blank. Who was that personage with the woman's name?
+And Rafaelito smiled with pity.</p>
+
+<p>"The best make, a Mercedes, better than a Panhard; everyone knows that.
+Made in Germany; sixty thousand francs. There isn't another one in
+Madrid."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, congratulations."</p>
+
+<p>And the artist shrugged his shoulders and went on painting.</p>
+
+<p>L&oacute;pez de Sosa was wealthy. His father, a former manufacturer of canned
+goods, had left him a fortune that he administered prudently, never
+gambling, nor keeping mistresses (he had no time for such follies) but
+finding all his amusement in sports that strengthen the body. He had a
+coach-house of his own, where he kept his carriages and his automobiles
+which he showed to his friends with the satisfaction of an artist. It
+was his museum. Besides, he owned several teams of horses, for modern
+fads did not make him forget his former tastes, and he took as much
+pride in his past glories as a horseman as he did in his skill as a
+driver of cars. At rare intervals, on the days of an important
+bull-fight or when some sensational races were being run in the
+Hippodrome, he won a triumph on the box by driving six cabs, covered
+with tassels and bells, that seemed to proclaim the glory and wealth of
+their owner with their noisy course.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He was proud of his virtuous life; free from foolishness or petty love
+affairs, wholly devoted to sports and show. His income was less than his
+expenses. The numerous personnel of his stable-garage, his horses,
+gasoline and tailors' bills ate up even a part of the principal. But
+L&oacute;pez de Sosa was undisturbed in this ruinous course,&mdash;for he was
+conscious of the danger, in spite of his extravagance. It was a mere
+youthful folly, he would cut down his expenses when he married. He
+devoted his evenings to reading, for he could not sleep quietly, unless
+he went through his classics (sporting-papers, automobile catalogs,
+etc.), and every month he made new acquisitions abroad, spending
+thousands of francs and, complaining, like a serious business man, of
+the rise in the Exchange, of the exorbitant customs charges, of the
+stupidity of the Government that so shackled the development of the
+country. The price of every automobile was greatly increased on crossing
+the frontier. And after that, politicians expected progress and
+regeneration!</p>
+
+<p>He had been educated by the Jesuits at the University of Deusto and had
+his degree in law. But that had not made him over-pious. He was liberal,
+he lived the modern spirit; he had no use for fanaticism nor hypocrisy.
+He had said good-by to the good Fathers as soon as his own father, who
+was a great admirer of them, had died. But he still preserved a certain
+respect for them because they had been his teachers and he knew that
+they were great scholars. But modern life was different. He read with
+perfect freedom, he read a great deal; he had in his house a library
+composed of at least a hundred French novels. He purchased all the
+volumes that came from Paris with a woman's picture on the cover and in
+which, under pretext of describing Greek, Roman, or Egyptian customs,
+the au<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span>thor placed a large number of youths and maidens without any
+other decorations of civilization than the fillets and the caps that
+covered their heads.</p>
+
+<p>He insisted on freedom, perfect freedom, but for him, men were divided
+into two castes, decent people and those who were not. Among the first
+figured en masse all the young fellows of the Gran Pe&ntilde;a, the old men of
+the Casino, together with some people whose names appeared in the
+papers, a certain evidence of their merit. The rest was the rabble,
+despicable and vulgar in the streets of the cities, repulsive and
+displeasing on the road, whom he insulted with all of the coarseness of
+ill-breeding and threatened to kill when a child ran in front of his car
+with the vicious purpose of letting itself be crushed under the wheels,
+to stir up trouble with a decent person, or when some workingman,
+pretending he could not hear the warnings of his horn, would not get out
+of the way and was run over&mdash;as if a man who makes two pesetas a day
+were superior to machines that cost thousands of francs! What could you
+do with such ignorant, commonplace people! And some wretches were still
+talking about the rights of man and revolutions!</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner, who expended incredible care in keeping his single suit
+presentable for calls and dinners, questioned L&oacute;pez de Sosa with
+astonishment in regard to the progress of his wardrobe.</p>
+
+<p>"How many ties have you now, Rafael?"</p>
+
+<p>"About seven hundred." He had counted them recently. And ashamed that he
+did not yet own the longed-for thousand, he spoke of fitting himself out
+on his next trip to London when the principal British automobilists were
+to contend for the cup. He received his boots from Paris, but they were
+made by a Swiss boot-maker, the same one who provided the foot-gear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> of
+Edward of England; he counted his trousers by the dozen, and never wore
+one pair more than eight or ten times; his linen was given to his valet
+almost before it was used, his hats all came from London. He had eight
+frock-coats made every year, that often grew old without ever being
+worn, of different colors to suit the circumstances and the hours when
+he must wear them. One in particular, dead black with long skirts,
+gloomy and austere, copied from the foreign illustrations that
+represented duels, was his uniform on solemn occasions, which he wore
+when some friend looked him up at the Pe&ntilde;a, to get his assistance in
+representing him with his customary skill in affairs of honor.</p>
+
+<p>His tailor admired his talent, his masterly command in choosing cloth
+and deciding on the cut among the countless designs. Result, he spent
+something like five thousand dollars a year on his clothes, and said
+ingenuously to the two artists,</p>
+
+<p>"How much less can a decent person spend if he wants to be presentable?"</p>
+
+<p>L&oacute;pez de Sosa visited Renovales' house as a friend after the latter had
+painted his portrait. In spite of his automobiles, his clothes, and the
+fact that he chose his associates among people who bore noble titles, he
+could not succeed in getting a foothold in society. He knew that behind
+his back people nicknamed him, "Pickled Herring," alluding to his
+father's trade, and that the young ladies, who counted him as a friend,
+rebelled at the idea of marrying the "Canned-goods Boy," which was
+another of his names. The friendship of Renovales was a source of pride.</p>
+
+<p>He had requested him to make his portrait, paying him without haggling,
+in order that he might appear at the Exhibition, quite as good a way as
+any other of introducing his insignificance among the famous men<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span> who
+were painted by the artist. After that he was on intimate terms with the
+master, talking everywhere about "his friend, Renovales!" with a sort of
+familiarity, as if he were a comrade who could not live without him.
+This raised him greatly in the estimation of his acquaintances. Besides,
+he had felt a real admiration for the master ever since one afternoon
+when tired out with the account of his prowess as a fencer, Renovales
+had laid aside his brushes and taking down two old foils, had had
+several bouts with him. What a man he was! And how he remembered the
+points he had learned in Rome!</p>
+
+<p>In his frequent visits to the artist's house, he finally felt attracted
+toward Milita; he saw in her the woman he wanted to marry. Lacking more
+sonorous titles, it was something to be the son-in-law of Renovales.
+Besides, the painter enjoyed the reputation of being wealthy, he spoke
+of his enormous profits, and he still had many years before him, to add
+to his fortune, all of which would be his daughter's.</p>
+
+<p>L&oacute;pez de Sosa began to pay court to Milita, calling on his great
+resources, appearing every day in a different suit, coming every
+afternoon, sometimes in a carriage drawn by a dashing pair, sometimes in
+one of his cars. The fashionable youth won the favor of her mother,&mdash;an
+important part. This was the kind of a husband for her daughter. No
+painter! And in vain did Soldevilla put on his brightest ties and show
+off shocking waistcoats; his rival crushed him and, what was worse, the
+master's wife, who formerly used to have a sort of motherly concern for
+him and called him by his first name, for she had known him as a boy,
+now received him coldly, as if she wished to discourage his suit for
+Milita.</p>
+
+<p>The girl fluctuated between her two admirers with a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> mocking smile. One
+seemed to interest her as much as the other. She drove the painter, the
+companion of her childhood, to despair, at times abusing him with her
+jests, at others attracting him with her effusive intimacy, as in the
+days when they played together; and at the same time she praised L&oacute;pez
+de Sosa's stylishness, laughed with him, and Soldevilla even suspected
+that they wrote letters to each other as if they were engaged.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales rejoiced at the cleverness with which his daughter kept the
+two young men uncertain and eager about her. She was a terror, a boy in
+skirts, more manly than either of her worshipers.</p>
+
+<p>"I know her, Pepe," he said to Cotoner. "We must let her do what she
+wants to. The day she decides in favor of one or the other we'll have to
+marry her at once. She isn't one of the girls to wait. If we don't marry
+her soon and to her taste, she's likely to elope with her fianc&eacute;."</p>
+
+<p>The father excused Milita's impatience. Poor girl! Think what she saw in
+her home! Her mother always ill, terrifying her with her tears, her
+cries and her nervous attacks; her father working in his studio, and her
+only companion the unsympathetic "Miss." He owed his thanks to L&oacute;pez de
+Sosa for taking them outdoors on these dizzy rides from which Josephina
+returned greatly quieted.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales preferred his pupil. He was almost his son, he had fought many
+a hard battle to give him fellowships and prizes. He was a trifle
+displeased at some of his slight infidelities, for as soon as he had won
+some renown, he bragged about his independence, praising everything that
+the master thought condemnable behind his back. But even so, the idea of
+his marrying his daughter pleased him; a painter as a son-in-law; his
+grandchildren painters, the blood of Renovales<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> perpetuated in a dynasty
+of artists who would fill history with their glory.</p>
+
+<p>"But, oh, Pepe! I'm afraid the girl will choose the other. After all,
+she's a woman. And women appreciate only what they see, gallantry and
+youth."</p>
+
+<p>And the master's words betrayed a certain bitterness, as though he were
+thinking of something very different from what he was saying.</p>
+
+<p>Then he began to discuss the merits of L&oacute;pez de Sosa, as if he were
+already a member of the family.</p>
+
+<p>"A good boy, isn't he, Pepe? A little stupid for us, unable to talk for
+ten minutes without making us yawn, a fine fellow, but not our kind."</p>
+
+<p>There was scorn in Renovales' voice as he spoke of the vigorous healthy
+young men of the present, with their brains absolutely free from
+culture, who had just assaulted life, invading every phase of it. What
+people! Gymnastics, fencing, kicking a huge bull, swinging a mallet on
+horseback, wild flights in an automobile; from the royal family down to
+the last middle-class scion everyone rushed into this life of childish
+joy, as if a man's mission consisted merely in hardening his muscles,
+sweating and delighting in the shifting chances of a game. Activity fled
+from the brain to the extremities of the body. They were strong, but
+their minds lay fallow, wrapped in a haze of childish credulity. Modern
+men seemed to stop growing at the age of fourteen; they never went
+beyond, content with the joys of movement and strength. Many of these
+big fellows were ignorant of women, or almost so, at the age when in
+other times they were turning back, satiated with love. Busy running
+without direction or end, they had no time nor quiet to think about
+women. Love was about to go on a strike, unable to resist the
+competition of sports. The young men lived by themselves, finding in
+athletic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> exercise a satisfaction that left them without any desire or
+curiosity for the other pleasures of life. They were big boys with
+strong fists; they could fight with a bull and yet the approach of a
+woman filled them with terror. All the sap of their life was used up in
+violent exercise. Intelligence seemed to have concentrated in their
+hands, leaving their heads empty. What was going to become of this new
+people? Perhaps it would form a healthier, stronger human race, but
+without love or passion, without any other association than the blind
+impulse of reproduction.</p>
+
+<p>"We are a different sort, eh, Pepe?" said Renovales with a sly wink.
+"When we were boys we didn't care for our bodies so well, but we had
+better times. We weren't so pure, but we were interested in something
+higher than automobiles and prize cups; we had ideals."</p>
+
+<p>Then he began to talk again of the young man who expected to become one
+of his family and made sport of his mentality.</p>
+
+<p>"If Milita decides on him, I won't object. The important thing in such
+matters is that they should be congenial to each other. He's a good boy;
+I could almost give him my blessing. But I suspect that when the
+sensation of novelty has worn off, he will go back to his fads and poor
+Milita will be jealous of those machines that are eating up the greater
+part of his fortune."</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes, before the light died out in the afternoon, Renovales excused
+his model, if he had one, and laying aside his brushes went out of the
+studio. When he came back, he would have on his coat and hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Pepe, let's take a walk."</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner knew where this walk would land them.</p>
+
+<p>They followed the iron fence of the Retiro and went down the Calle de
+Alcal&aacute;, walking slowly among the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> groups of strollers, some of whom
+turned round behind them to point out the master. "That taller one is
+Renovales, the painter." In a few minutes, Mariano hastened his step
+with nervous impatience, he stopped talking and Cotoner followed him
+with an ill-humored expression, humming between his teeth. When they
+reached the Cibeles, the old painter knew that their walk was nearly
+over.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll see you to-morrow, Pepe, I'm going this way. I've got to see the
+countess."</p>
+
+<p>One day, he did not limit himself to this brief leave-taking. After he
+had gone a few steps, he came back toward his companion and said
+hesitatingly:</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, if Josephina asks you where I went, don't say anything. I know
+that you are prudent but she is always worried. I tell you this so as to
+avoid any trouble. The two women don't get along together very well.
+Some woman's quarrel!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IIa" id="IIa"></a>II</h2>
+
+
+<p>At the opening of spring, when Madrid was beginning to think good
+weather had really come, and people were impatiently getting out their
+summer clothes, there was an unexpected and treacherous return of winter
+that clouded the sky and covered with a coat of snow the muddy ground
+and the gardens where the first flowers of spring were beginning to
+sprout.</p>
+
+<p>There was a fire once more in the fireplace in the drawing-room of the
+Countess of Alberca, where all the gentlemen who formed her coterie
+gathered to keep warm on days when she was "at home," not having a
+meeting to preside over or calls to make.</p>
+
+<p>When Renovales came one afternoon, he spoke enthusiastically of the view
+of Moncloa, covered with snow. He had just been there, a beautiful
+sight, the woods, buried in wintry silence, surprised by the white
+shroud when they were beginning to crack with the swelling of the sap.
+It was a pity that the camera craze filled the woods with so many people
+who went back and forth with their outfits, sullying the purity of the
+snow.</p>
+
+<p>The countess was as interested as a child. She wanted to see that, she
+would go the next day. Her friends tried in vain to dissuade her,
+telling her the weather would probably change presently. To-morrow the
+sun would come out, the snow would melt; these unexpected storms were
+characteristic of the fickle climate of Madrid.</p>
+
+<p>"It makes no difference," said Concha obstinately,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> "I've got the idea
+into my head. It's years since I have seen it. My life is such a busy
+one."</p>
+
+<p>She would go to see the thaw in the morning; no, not in the morning. She
+got up late and had to receive all those Women's Rights ladies that came
+to consult her. In the afternoon, she would go after luncheon. It was
+too bad that Renovales worked at that time and could not go with her. He
+could appreciate landscapes so well with his artist's eyes and had often
+spoken to her of the sunset from the palace of Moncloa, a sight almost
+equal to the one you can see in Rome from the Pinzio at dusk. The
+painter smiled gallantly. He would try to be at Moncloa the next day;
+they would meet.</p>
+
+<p>The countess seemed to take sudden fright at this promise and glanced at
+Doctor Monteverde. But she was disappointed in her hope of being
+censured for her fickleness and unfaithfulness, for the doctor remained
+indifferent.</p>
+
+<p>Lucky doctor! How Renovales hated him. He was a young man, as fair and
+as fragile as a porcelain figure, a combination of such striking
+beauties that his face was almost a caricature. His hair, parted in two
+waves over his pale forehead, was black, very black and shining with
+bluish reflections, his eyes, as soft as velvet, showed the read spot of
+the lachrymal on the polished ivory of the cornea, veritable odalisque
+eyes, his bright red lips showed under his bristly mustache, his
+complexion was as pale as a camellia, and his teeth flashed like pearl.
+Concha looked at him with ecstatic devotion, talked with her eyes on
+him, consulting him with her glance, lamenting inwardly his lack of
+mastery, eager to be his slave, to be corrected by him in all the
+caprices of her giddy character.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales scorned him, questioning his manhood,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> making the most
+atrocious comments on him in his rough fashion.</p>
+
+<p>He was a doctor of science and was waiting for a chair at Madrid to be
+declared vacant, that he might become a candidate for it. The Countess
+of Alberca had him under her high protection, talking about him
+enthusiastically to all the important gentlemen who exercised any
+influence in University circles. She would break out into the most
+extravagant praise of the doctor in Renovales' presence. He was a
+scholar and what made her admire him was the fact that all his learning
+did not keep him from dressing well and being as fair as an angel.</p>
+
+<p>"For pretty teeth, look at Monteverde's," she would say, looking at him
+in the crowded room, through her lorgnette.</p>
+
+<p>At other times, following the course of her ideas, she would interrupt
+the conversation, without noticing the irrelevancy of her words.</p>
+
+<p>"But did you notice the doctor's hands? They're more delicate than mine!
+They look like a woman's hands."</p>
+
+<p>The painter was indignant at these demonstrations of Concha's that often
+occurred in her husband's presence.</p>
+
+<p>The calm of that honorable gentleman astounded him. Was the man blind?
+And the count with fatherly good humor always said the same thing.</p>
+
+<p>"That Concha! Did you ever hear such frankness! Don't mind her,
+Monteverde, it's my wife's way, childishness."</p>
+
+<p>The doctor would smile, flattered at the atmosphere of worship with
+which the countess surrounded him.</p>
+
+<p>He had written a book on the natural origin of animal organism, of which
+the fair countess spoke enthusiastically. The painter observed this
+change in her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> tastes with surprise and envy. No more music, nor verses,
+nor plastic arts which had formerly occupied her flighty attention, that
+was attracted by everything that shines or makes a noise. Now she looked
+on the arts as pretty, insignificant toys that were fit to amuse only
+the childhood of the human race. Times were changing, people must be
+serious. Science, nothing but science; she was the protectress, the good
+friend, the adviser of a scholar. And Renovales found famous books on
+the tables and chairs, feverishly run through and laid aside because she
+grew tired of them or could not understand them after the first impulse
+of curiosity.</p>
+
+<p>Her coterie, almost wholly composed of old gentlemen attracted by the
+beauty of the countess, and in love with her though without hope, smiled
+to hear her talking so weightily about science. Men who were prominent
+in politics admired her frankly. How many things that woman knew! Many
+that they did not know themselves. The others, well-known physicians,
+professors, lawyers, who had not studied anything for years, approved
+complacently. For a woman it was not at all bad. And she, lifting her
+glasses to her eyes from time to time to relish the doctor's beauty,
+talked with a pedantic slowness about protoplasms, and the reproduction
+of the cells, the cannibalisms of the phagocytes, catarine, anthropoid
+and pithecoid apes, discoplacentary mammals and the Pithecanthropos,
+treating the mysteries of life with friendly confidence, repeating
+strange scientific words, as if they were the names of society folks,
+who had dined with her the evening before.</p>
+
+<p>The handsome Doctor Monteverde, according to her, was head and shoulders
+above all the scholars of universal reputation.</p>
+
+<p>Their books made her tired, she could not make any<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>thing out of them, in
+spite of the fact that the doctor admired them greatly. To make up for
+this, she had read Monteverde's book over and over, and she recommended
+this wonderful work to her lady friends, who in matters of reading never
+went beyond the novels in popular magazines.</p>
+
+<p>"He is a scholar," said the countess one afternoon while talking alone
+with Renovales. "He's just beginning now, but I will push him ahead and
+he will turn out to be a genius. He has extraordinary talent. I wish you
+had read his book. Are you acquainted with Darwin? You aren't, are you?
+Well, he is greater than Darwin, much greater."</p>
+
+<p>"I can believe that," said the painter. "Your Monteverde is as pretty as
+a baby and Darwin was an ugly old fellow."</p>
+
+<p>The countess hesitated whether to get serious or to laugh, and finally
+she shook her lorgnette at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Keep still, you horrid man. After all, you're a painter. You can't
+understand tender friendships, pure relations, fraternity based on
+study."</p>
+
+<p>How bitterly the painter laughed at this purity and fraternity! His eyes
+were good and Concha, for her part, was no model of prudence in hiding
+her feelings. Monteverde was her lover, just as formerly a musician had
+been, at a period when the countess talked of nothing but Beethoven and
+Wagner, as if they were callers, and long before that a pretty little
+duke, who gave private amateur bull-fights at which he slaughtered the
+innocent oxen after greeting lovingly the Alberca woman, who, wrapped in
+a white mantilla, and decorated with pinks, leaned out of the box in the
+grandstand. Her relations with the doctor were almost common talk. That
+was amply proved by the fury with which the gentlemen of her coterie
+pulled him to pieces, declaring that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> he was an idiot and that his book
+was a Harlequin's coat, a series of excerpts from other men, poorly
+basted together, with the daring of ignorance. They, too, were stung by
+envy, in their senile, silent love, by the triumph of that stripling who
+carried off their idol, whom they had worshiped with a contemplative
+devotion that gave new life to their old age.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales was angry with himself. He tried in vain to overcome the habit
+that made him turn his steps every afternoon toward the countess's
+house.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll never go there again," he would say when he was back in his
+studio. "A pretty part you're playing, Mariano! Acting as a chorus to a
+love duet, in the company of all these senile imbeciles. A fine aim in
+life, this countess of yours!"</p>
+
+<p>But the next day he would go back, thinking with a sort of hope of
+Monteverde's pretentious superiority, and the disdainful air with which
+he received his fair adorer's worship. Concha would soon get tired of
+this mustached doll and turn her eyes on him, a man.</p>
+
+<p>The painter observed the transformation of his nature. He was a
+different man, and he made every effort to keep his family from noticing
+this change. He recognized mentally that he was in love, with the
+satisfaction of a mature man who sees in this a sign of youth the
+budding of a second life. He had felt impelled toward Concha by the
+desire of breaking the monotony of his existence, of imitating other
+men, of tasting the acidity of infidelity, in a brief escape from the
+stern imposing walls that shut in the desert of married life which was
+every day covered with more brambles and tares. Her resistance
+exasperated him, increasing his desire. He was not exactly sure how he
+felt; perhaps it was merely a physical attraction and added to that the
+wound to his pride, the bitterness of being repelled when he came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> down
+from the heights of virtue, where he had held his position with savage
+pride, believing that all the joys of the earth were waiting for him,
+dazzled by his glory and that he had only to hold out his arms and they
+would run to him.</p>
+
+<p>He felt humiliated by his failure; a dumb rage filled him when he
+compared his gray hair and his eyes, surrounded by growing wrinkles,
+with that pretty boy of science who seemed to drive the countess insane.
+Women! Their intellectual interest, their exaggerated admiration of
+fame! A lie! They worshiped talent only when it was well presented in a
+young and beautiful covering.</p>
+
+<p>Impelled by his obstinacy, Renovales was determined to overcome the
+resistance. He recalled, without the least remorse, the scene with his
+wife in the bedroom, and her scornful words that foretold his failure
+with the countess. Josephina's disdain was only another spur to urge him
+to continue his course.</p>
+
+<p>Concha kept him off and led him on at the same time. There was no doubt
+that the master's love flattered her vanity. She laughed at his
+passionate protestations, taking them in jest, always answering them in
+the same tone: "Be dignified, master. That isn't becoming to you. You
+are a great man, a genius. Let the boys be the ones to play the part of
+the lovesick student." But when enraged at her subtle mockery, he took a
+mental oath not to come back again, she seemed to guess it and she
+suddenly assumed an affectionate air, attracting him with an interest
+that made him foresee the near approach of his triumph.</p>
+
+<p>If he was offended and kept silence, she was the one who talked of love,
+of eternal passions between two beings of lofty minds, based on the
+harmony of their thoughts; and she did not cease this dangerous
+conver<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span>sation until the master, with a sudden renewal of confidence,
+came forward offering his love, only to be received with that kindly and
+still ironical smile that seemed to look on him as a child whose
+judgment was faulty.</p>
+
+<p>And so the master lived, fluctuating between hope and despair, now
+favored, now repelled, but always incapable of escaping from her
+influence, as if a crime were haunting him. He sought opportunities to
+see her alone with the ingenuity of a college boy, he invented pretexts
+for going to her house at unusual hours, when there were no callers
+present, and his courage failed him when he ran into the pretty doctor
+and felt around himself that sensation of uneasiness which always seizes
+an unwelcome guest.</p>
+
+<p>The vague hope of meeting the countess at Moncloa, of walking with her a
+whole afternoon, unmolested by that circle of insufferable people who
+surrounded her with their drooling worship, kept him excited all night
+and the next morning, as if a real rendezvous were awaiting him. Would
+she go? Was not her promise a mere whim that she had immediately
+forgotten? He sent a note to an ex-minister of State, whose portrait he
+was painting, to ask him not to come to the studio that afternoon, and
+after luncheon he got into a cab, telling the cabby to beat the horse,
+to go full speed, for fear of being late.</p>
+
+<p>He knew that it would be hours before she came, if she did come; but a
+mad, unreasonable impatience filled him. He thought without knowing why
+that, by arriving ahead of time, he would hasten the countess's coming.</p>
+
+<p>He got out in the square in front of the little palace of Moncloa. The
+cab disappeared in the direction of Madrid, up hill along an avenue that
+was lost in the distance behind an arch of dry branches.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales walked up and down, alone in the little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> square. The sun was
+shining in a patch of blue sky, among the heavy clouds. In the places
+which its rays did not reach, it was cold. The water ran down from the
+foot of the trees, after dripping from the branches and trickling down
+the trunks; it was melting rapidly. The wood seemed to weep with joy
+under the caress of the sun, that destroyed the last traces of the white
+shroud.</p>
+
+<p>The majestic silence of Nature, abandoned to its own power, surrounded
+the artist. The pines were swinging with the long gusts of wind, filling
+space with a murmur, like the sound of distant harps. The square was
+hidden in the icy shadow of the trees. Up above in the front of the
+palace some pigeons, seeking the sun above the tops of the pines, swept
+around the old flagpole and the classic busts blackened by the weather.
+Then, tired of flying, they settled down on the rusty iron balconies,
+adding to the old building a white fluttering decoration, a rustling
+garland of feathers. In the middle of the square a marble swan, with its
+neck violently stretched toward the sky, threw out a jet, whose murmur
+seemed to heighten the impression of icy cold which he felt in the
+shadow.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales began to walk, crushing the frozen crust that cracked under
+his feet in the shady places. He leaned over the circular iron rail that
+surrounds a part of the square. Through the curtain of black branches,
+where the first buds were beginning to open, he saw the ridge that
+bounds the horizon; the mountains of Guadarrama, phantoms of snow that
+were mingled with the masses of clouds. Nearer, the mountains of Pardo
+stood out with their dark peaks, black with pines, and to the left
+stretched out the slopes of the hills of the Casa de Campo, where the
+first yellow touches of spring were beginning to show.</p>
+
+<p>At his feet lay the fields of Moncloa, the antique little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> gardens, the
+grove of Viveros, bordering the stream. Carriages were moving in the
+roads below, their varnished tops flashing in the sun like fiery mortar
+boards. The meadows, the foliage of the woods, everything seemed clean
+and bright after the recent storm. The all-pervading green tone, with
+its infinite variations from black to yellow, smiled at the touch of the
+sun after the chill of the snow. In the distance sounded the constant
+reports of shotguns that seemed to tear the air with the intensity that
+is common in still afternoons. They were hunting in the Casa de Campo.
+Between the colonnades of trees and the green sheets of the meadows, the
+water flashed in the sun, bits of ponds, glimpses of canals, pools of
+melted snow, like bright trembling edges of huge swords, lost in the
+grass.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales hardly looked at the landscape; it had no message for him that
+afternoon. He was preoccupied with other things. He saw a smart coup&eacute;
+come down the avenue, and he left the belvedere to go to meet it. She
+was coming! But the coup&eacute; passed by him, slowly and majestically without
+stopping and he saw through the window an old lady wrapped in furs, with
+sunken eyes and distorted mouth, trembling with old age, her head
+bobbing with the movement of the carriage. It disappeared in the
+direction of the little church beside the palace and the painter was
+alone again.</p>
+
+<p>No! She would not come! His heart began to tell him that there was no
+use waiting.</p>
+
+<p>Some little girls, with battered shoes, and straight greasy hair that
+floated around their necks, began to run about the square. Renovales did
+not see where they came from. Perhaps they were the children of the
+guardian of the palace.</p>
+
+<p>A guard came down the avenue with his gun hanging from his shoulder, and
+his horn at his side. Beyond<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> approached a man in black, who looked like
+a servant, escorted by two huge dogs, two majestic bluish-gray Danes,
+that walked with a dignified bearing, prudent and moderate but proud of
+their terrifying appearance. Not a carriage could be seen. Curses!</p>
+
+<p>Seated on one of the stone benches, the master finally took out the
+little notebook that he always carried with him. He sketched the figures
+of the children as they ran around the fountain. That was one way to
+kill time. One after the other he sketched all the girls, then he caught
+them in several groups, but at last they disappeared behind the palace,
+going down toward the Ca&ntilde;o Gordo. Renovales, having nothing to distract
+him, left his seat and walked about, stamping noisily. His feet were
+like ice, this waiting in the cold was putting him in a terrible mood.
+Then he went and sat down on another bench near the servant in black,
+who had the two dogs at his knees. They were sitting on their hind paws,
+resting with as much dignity as real people, watching that gentleman
+with their gray eyes that winked intelligently, as he looked at them
+attentively and then moved his pencil on the book that rested on his
+knee. The painter sketched the two dogs in different postures, giving
+himself up to the work with such interest that he quite forgot his
+purpose in coming there. Oh, what splendid creatures! Renovales loved
+animals in which beauty was united with strength. If he had lived alone
+and could have consulted his own tastes, he would have converted his
+house into a menagerie.</p>
+
+<p>The servant went away with his dogs and the artist once more was left
+alone. Several couples passed slowly, arm in arm, and disappeared behind
+the palace toward the gardens below. Then a group of school boys that
+left behind them, as their cassocks fluttered, that odor of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> healthy,
+dirty flesh that is peculiar to barracks and convents. And still the
+countess did not come!</p>
+
+<p>The painter went again to rest his elbows on the balustrade of the
+belvedere. He would only wait a half an hour longer. The afternoon was
+wearing away; the sun was still high, but from time to time the
+landscape was darkened. The clouds that had been confined on the horizon
+had been let loose and they were rolling through the field of the sky
+like a flock of sheep, assuming fantastic shapes, rushing eagerly in
+tumultuous confusion as if they wished to swallow the ball of fire that
+was slipping slowly over a bit of clear blue sky.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly, Renovales felt a sort of shock near his heart. No one had
+touched him; it was a warning of his nerves that for some time had been
+especially irritable. She was near, was coming he was sure. And turning
+around, he saw her, still a long way off, coming down the avenue, in
+black with a fur coat, her hands in a little muff and a veil over her
+eyes. Her tall, graceful silhouette was outlined against the yellow
+ground as she passed the trees. Her carriage was returning up the hill,
+perhaps to wait for her at the top near the School of Agriculture.</p>
+
+<p>As she met him in the center of the square she held out her gloved hand,
+warm from the muff, and they turned toward the belvedere, chatting.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm in a furious mood, disgusted to death. I didn't expect to come; I
+forgot all about it, upon my word. But as I was coming out of the
+President's house I thought of you. I was sure I would find you here.
+And so I have come to have you drive away my ill humor."</p>
+
+<p>Through the veil, Renovales saw her eyes that flashed hostilely and her
+dainty lips angrily tightened.</p>
+
+<p>She spoke quickly, eager to vent the wrath that was swelling her heart,
+without paying any attention to what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> was around her, as if she were in
+her own drawing room where everything was familiar.</p>
+
+<p>She had been to see the Prime-Minister to recommend her "affair" to his
+attention; a desire of the count's on the fulfillment of which his
+happiness depended. Poor Paco (her husband) dreamed of the Golden
+Fleece. That was the only thing that was lacking to crown the tower of
+crosses, keys and ribbons that he was raising about his person, from his
+belly to his neck, till not an inch of his body was without this
+glorious covering. The Golden Fleece and then death! Why should they not
+do this favor for Paco, such a good man, who would not hurt a fly? What
+would it cost them to grant him this toy and make him happy?</p>
+
+<p>"There aren't any friends any longer, Mariano," said the countess
+bitterly. "The Prime-Minister is a fool who forgets his old friendships
+now that he is head of the government. I who have seen him sighing
+around me like a comic opera tenor, making love to me (yes, I tell the
+truth to you) and ready to commit suicide because I scorned his
+vulgarity and foolishness! This afternoon, the same old story; lots of
+holding my hand, lots of making eyes, 'dear Concha,' 'sweet Concha' and
+other sugary expressions, just such as he sings in Congress like an old
+canary. Sum total, the Fleece is impossible, he is very sorry, but at
+Court they are unwilling."</p>
+
+<p>And the countess, as if she saw for the first time where she was, turned
+her eyes angrily toward the dark hills of the Casa de Campo, where shots
+could still be heard.</p>
+
+<p>"And they wonder that people think this way or that! I am an anarchist,
+do you hear, Mariano? Every day I feel more revolutionary. Don't laugh,
+for it is no jest. Poor Paco, who is a lamb of God, is horrified to
+hear<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span> me. 'Woman, think what we are! We must be on good terms with the
+royal house.' But I rise in rebellion; I know them; a crowd of
+reprobates. Why shouldn't my Paco have the Fleece, if the poor man needs
+it. I tell you, master, this cowardly, meek country makes me raging mad.
+We ought to have what France had in '93. If I were alone, without all
+these trifles of name and position, I would do to-day something that
+would stir people. I'd throw a bomb, no, not a bomb; I'd get a revolver
+and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Fire!" shouted the painter, bursting into a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>Concha drew back indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't joke, master. I'll go away. I'll slap you. This is more serious
+than you think. This afternoon is no time for jokes."</p>
+
+<p>But her fickle nature contradicted the seriousness that she pretended to
+give her words, for she smiled slightly, as if pleased at some memory.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't wholly a failure," she said after a long pause. "My hands
+aren't empty. The prime-minister didn't want to make me his enemy and so
+he offered me a compensation, since the 'Lamb' affair was impossible. A
+deputy's chair at the next election."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales' eyes opened in astonishment. "For whom do you want that? To
+whom is that going to be given?"</p>
+
+<p>"To whom?" mimicked Concha with mock astonishment. "To whom! To whom do
+you suppose, you simpleton! Not for you, you don't know anything about
+that or anything else, except your brushes. For Monteverde, for the
+doctor, who will do great things."</p>
+
+<p>The artist's noisy laugh resounded in the silence of the square.</p>
+
+<p>"Darwin a deputy of the majority! Darwin saying 'Aye' and 'No.'"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And after these exclamations his laugh of mock astonishment continued.</p>
+
+<p>"Laugh, you old bear! Open that mouth wider; wag your apostolic beard!
+How funny you are! And what's strange about that? But don't laugh any
+longer; you make me nervous. I'll go away, if you keep on like this."</p>
+
+<p>They remained silent for a long while. The countess was not long in
+forgetting her troubles; her bird-like brain never retained any one
+impression for long. She looked around her with disdainful eyes, eager
+to mortify the painter. Was that what Renovales raved over so? Was there
+nothing more?</p>
+
+<p>They began to walk slowly, going down to the terraced gardens behind the
+palace. They descended the moss-covered slopes that were streaked with
+the black flint of the flights of stairs.</p>
+
+<p>The silence was deathlike. The water murmured as it flowed from the
+trunks of the trees, forming little streams that trickled down hill,
+almost invisible in the grass. In some shady spots there still remained
+piles of snow, like bundles of white wool. The shrill cries of the birds
+sounded like the scratching of a diamond on glass. At the edge of the
+stairways, the pedestals of black, crumbling stone recalled the statues
+and urns they had once supported. The little gardens, cut in geometric
+figures, stretched out the Greek square of their carpet of foliage on
+each level of the terrace. In the squares, the fountains spurted in
+pools surrounded by rusted railings, or flowed down triple layers with a
+ceaseless murmur. Water everywhere,&mdash;in the air, in the ground,
+whispering, icy, adding to the cold impression of the landscape, where
+the sun seemed a red blotch of color devoid of heat.</p>
+
+<p>They passed under arches of vines, between huge<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> dying trees covered to
+the top with winding rings of ivy that clung to the venerable trunks,
+veneered with a green and yellow crust. The paths were bounded on one
+side by the slope of the hill, from the top of which came the invisible
+tinkling of a bell, and where from time to time there appeared on the
+blue background of the sky the massive outline of a slowly moving cow.
+On the other, a rustic railing of branches painted white bounded the
+path and, beyond it, in the valley, lay the dark flower beds with their
+melancholy solitude and their fountains that wept day and night in an
+atmosphere of old age and abandon. The closely matted brambles stretched
+from tree to tree along the slopes. The slender cypresses, the tall
+pines with their straight trunks, formed a thick colonnade, a lattice
+through which the sunlight flitted, a false unearthly light, that
+striped the ground with bands of gold and bars of shadow.</p>
+
+<p>The painter praised the spot enthusiastically. It was the only corner
+for artists that could be found in Madrid. It was there that the great
+Don Francisco had worked. It seemed as though at some turn in the path
+they would run into Goya, sitting before his easel, scowling
+ill-naturedly at some dainty duchess who was serving as his model.</p>
+
+<p>Modern clothes seemed out of keeping with this background. Renovales
+declared that the correct apparel for such a landscape was a bright
+coat, a powdered wig, silk stockings, walking beside a Directoire gown.</p>
+
+<p>The countess smiled as she listened to the painter. She looked about
+with great curiosity; that was not a bad walk; she guessed it was the
+first time she ever saw it. Very pretty! But she was not fond of the
+country.</p>
+
+<p>To her mind the best landscape was the silks of a drawing room and, as
+for trees, she preferred the scenery at the Opera to the accompaniment
+of music.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"The country bores me, master. It makes me so sad. If you leave Nature
+alone to itself it is very commonplace."</p>
+
+<p>They entered a little square in the center of which was a pool, on the
+level of the ground, with stone posts that marked where there had once
+been a railing. The water, swollen by the melting snow, was overflowing
+the stone curb, and reached out in a thin sheet as it started down hill.
+The countess stopped, afraid of wetting her feet. The painter went
+ahead, putting his feet in the driest places, taking her hand to guide
+her, and she followed him, laughing at the obstacle and picking up her
+skirts.</p>
+
+<p>As they continued their way down another path, Renovales kept that soft
+little hand in his, feeling its warmth through the glove. She let him
+hold it, as if she did not notice his touch, but still with a faint
+expression of mischievousness on her lips and in her eyes. The master
+seemed undecided, embarrassed, as if he did not know how to begin.</p>
+
+<p>"Always the same?" he asked weakly. "Haven't you a little charity for me
+to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>The countess broke out in a merry laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"There it comes. I was expecting it; that's why I hesitated to come. In
+the carriage I said to myself several times: 'My dear, you're making a
+mistake in going to Moncloa; you will be bored to death; you may expect
+declaration number one thousand.'"</p>
+
+<p>Then she assumed a tone of mock indignation.</p>
+
+<p>"But, master, can't you talk about anything else? Are we women condemned
+to be unable to talk with a man without his feeling obliged to pour out
+a proposal?"</p>
+
+<p>Renovales protested. She might say that to other men, but not to him,
+for he was in love with her. He swore it; he would say it on his knees,
+to make her believe it. Madly in love with her! But she mimicked him
+gro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>tesquely, raising one hand to her breast and laughing cruelly.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, I know, the old story. There's no use in your repeating it; I know
+it by heart. A volcano in my breast, impossible to live without you&mdash;if
+you do not love me, I will kill myself. They all say the same thing. I
+never saw such a lack of originality. Master, for goodness sake, do not
+be so commonplace! A man like you saying such things!"</p>
+
+<p>Renovales was crushed by her mocking mimicry. But Concha, as if she took
+pity on him, hastened to add, in an affectionate tone:</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you have to be in love with me? Do you think I shall esteem
+you less if I relieve you from an obligation that all men who surround
+me feel under? I like you, master; I need to see you; I should be very
+sorry if we quarreled. I like you as a friend; the best of all, the
+first. I like you because you are good; a great big boy; a bearded baby
+who doesn't know even the least bit about the world, but who is very,
+<i>very</i> talented. I've wanted for a long time to see you alone, to talk
+with you quite freely, to tell you this. I like you as I like no one
+else. When I am with you, I feel a confidence such as no other man
+inspires in me. Good friends, brother and sister, if you will. But don't
+put on such a gloomy face! Look pleasant, please! Give one of your
+laughs that cheer my soul, master!"</p>
+
+<p>But the master remained sullen, looking at the ground, running the
+fingers of his hand through his thick beard.</p>
+
+<p>"All that's a lie, Concha," he said rudely. "The truth is that you are
+in love, you're mad over that worthless Monteverde."</p>
+
+<p>The countess smiled, as if the rudeness of these words flattered her.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, yes, Mariano. We like each other; I believe I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> love him as I
+never loved any man. I have never told anyone; you are the first one to
+hear it from me, because you are my friend, because somehow or other I
+tell you everything. We like each other or, rather, I like him much more
+than he does me. There is something like gratitude in my love. I don't
+deceive myself, Mariano! Thirty-six years! I venture to confess my age
+to you. However, I am still presentable; I keep my youth well, but he is
+much younger. Years younger and I could almost be his mother."</p>
+
+<p>She was silent for a moment, almost frightened at this difference
+between her lover's age and hers, but then she added with a sudden
+confidence:</p>
+
+<p>"He likes me, too, I know. I am his adviser, his inspiration; he says
+that with me he feels a new strength for work, that he will be a great
+man, thanks to me. But I like him more, much more than he does me; there
+is almost as great a difference in our affections as there is in our
+ages."</p>
+
+<p>"And why do you not love me?" said the master tearfully. "I worship you,
+the tables would be turned. I would be the one to surround you with
+constant idolatry, and you would let me worship you, caress you, as I
+would an idol, my head bowed at its feet."</p>
+
+<p>Concha laughed again, mocking the artist's hoarse voice, his passionate
+expression, and his eager eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't I love you? Master, don't be childish. There's no use in
+asking such things, you cannot dictate to Love. I do not like you as you
+want me to, because it is impossible. Be satisfied to be my best friend.
+You know I show a confidence in you that I do not show to Monteverde.
+Yes, I tell you things I would never tell him."</p>
+
+<p>"But the other part!" exclaimed the painter violently.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> "What I need,
+what I am hungry for,&mdash;you, your beauty, real love!"</p>
+
+<p>"Master, contain yourself," she said with affected modesty. "How well I
+know you! You're going to say some of those horrid things that men
+always say when they rave over a woman. I'm going away so as not to hear
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Then she added with maternal seriousness, as if she wanted to reprimand
+his violence:</p>
+
+<p>"I am not so crazy as people think. I consider the consequences of my
+actions carefully. Mariano, look at yourself, think of your position. A
+wife, a daughter who will marry one of these days, the prospect of being
+a grandfather. And you still think of such follies! I could not accede
+to your proposal even if I loved you. How terrible! To deceive
+Josephina, the friend of my school-days! Poor thing, so gentle, so
+kind,&mdash;always ill. No, Mariano, never. A man cannot enter such
+compromising affairs, unless he is free. I could never feel like loving
+you. Friends, nothing more than friends!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we will not be that," exclaimed Renovales impetuously. "I will
+leave your house forever. I will not see you any longer. I will do
+anything to forget you. It is an intolerable torment. My life will be
+calmer if I do not see you."</p>
+
+<p>"You will not go away," said Concha quietly, certain of her power. "You
+will remain beside me just as you always have, if you really like me,
+and I shall have in you my best friend. Don't be a baby, master, you
+will see that there is something charming about our friendship that you
+do not understand now. I shall give you something that the rest do not
+know,&mdash;intimacy, confidence."</p>
+
+<p>And as she said this, she put one hand on the painter's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span> arm and drew
+closer to him, searching him with her eyes in which there was a strange,
+mysterious light.</p>
+
+<p>A horn sounded near them; there was swift rush of heavy wheels. An
+automobile shot past them at full speed, following the highroad.
+Renovales tried to make out the figures in the car, hardly larger than
+dolls in the distance. Perhaps it was L&oacute;pez de Sosa, who was driving,
+perhaps his wife and daughter were those two little figures, wrapped in
+veils, who occupied the seats.</p>
+
+<p>The possibility of Josephina's having passed through the background of
+the landscape without seeing him, without noticing that he was there,
+forgetful of everything, an imploring lover, overcame him with the sense
+of remorse.</p>
+
+<p>They remained motionless for a long while in silence, leaning on the
+rough wooden railing, watching through the colonnade of the trees the
+bright, cherry-red sun, as it sank, lighting up the horizon with a blaze
+of fire. The leaden clouds, seeing it on the point of death, assailed it
+with treacherous greed.</p>
+
+<p>Concha watched the sunset with the interest that a sight but seldom seen
+arouses.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at that huge cloud, master. How black it is! It looks like a
+dragon; no, a hippopotamus; see its round paws, like towers. How it
+runs! It's going to eat the sun. It's eating it! It has swallowed it
+now!"</p>
+
+<p>The landscape grew dark. The sun had disappeared inside of that monster
+that filled the horizon. Its waving back was edged with silver, and as
+if it could not hold the burning star; it broke below, pouring out a
+rain of pale rays. Then, burned by this digestion, it vanished in smoke,
+was torn into black tufts, and once more the red disc appeared, bathing
+sky and earth with gold, peopling the water of the pools with restless
+fiery fishes.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales, leaning on the railing with one elbow be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>side the countess,
+breathed her subtle fragrance, felt the warm touch of her firm body.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go back, master," she said with a suggestion of uneasiness in her
+voice. "I feel cold. Besides, with a companion like you, it's impossible
+to stay still."</p>
+
+<p>And she hastened her step, realizing from her experience with men the
+danger of remaining alone with Renovales. His pale, excited face warned
+her that he was likely to make some reckless, impetuous advance.</p>
+
+<p>In the square of Ca&ntilde;o Gordo they passed a couple going slowly down the
+hill, very close together, not yet daring to walk arm in arm, but ready
+to put their arms around each other's waists as soon as they disappeared
+in the next path. The young man carried his cloak under his arm, as
+proudly as a gallant in the old comedies; she, small and pale, without
+any beauty except that of youth, was wrapped in a poor cloak and walked
+with her simple eyes fixed on her companion's.</p>
+
+<p>"Some student with his girl," said Renovales. "They are happier than we
+are, Concha."</p>
+
+<p>"We are getting old, master," she said with feigned sadness, excluding
+herself from old age, loading the whole burden of years on her
+companion.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales turned toward her in a final outburst of protest.</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I not be as happy as that boy? Haven't I a right to it?
+Concha, you do not know who I am; you forget it, accustomed as you are
+to treat me like a child. I am Renovales, the painter, the famous
+master. I am known all over the world."</p>
+
+<p>And he spoke of his fame with brutal indelicacy, growing more and more
+irritated at her coldness, displaying his renown like a mantle of light
+that should blind women and make them fall at his feet. And a man like
+him had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> to submit to being put off for that simpleton of a doctor?</p>
+
+<p>The countess smiled with pity. Her eyes, too, revealed a sort of
+compassion. The fool! The child! How absurd men of talent were!</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, you are a great man, master. That is why I am proud of your
+friendship. I even admit that it gives me some importance. I like you. I
+feel admiration for you."</p>
+
+<p>"No, not admiration, Concha, love! To belong to each other! Complete
+love."</p>
+
+<p>She continued to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my boy; Love!"</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes seemed to speak to him ironically. Love does not distinguish
+talents; it is ignorant and therefore boasts of its blindness. It only
+perceives the fragrance of youth, of life in its flower.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall be friends, Mariano, friends and nothing more. You will grow
+accustomed to it and find our affection dear. Don't be material; it
+doesn't seem as if you were an artist. Idealism, master, that is what
+you need."</p>
+
+<p>And she continued to talk to him from the heights of her pity, until
+they parted near the place where her carriage was waiting for her.</p>
+
+<p>"Friends, Mariano, nothing more than friends, but true friends."</p>
+
+<p>When Concha had gone, Renovales walked in the shadows of the twilight,
+gesticulating and clenching his fists, until he left Moncloa. Finding
+himself alone, he was again filled with wrath and insulted the countess
+mentally, now that he was free from the loving subjection that he
+suffered in her presence. How she amused herself with him! How his
+friends would laugh to see him helplessly submissive to that woman who
+had belonged to so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> many! His pride made him insist on conquering her,
+at any cost, even of humiliation and brutality. It was an affair of
+honor to make her his, even if it were only once, and then to take
+revenge by repelling her, throwing her at his feet, and saying with a
+sovereign air, "That is what I do to people who resist me."</p>
+
+<p>But then he realized his weakness. He would always be beaten by that
+woman who looked at him coldly, who never lost her calm and considered
+him an inferior being. His dejection made him think of his family, of
+his sick wife, and the duties that bound him to her, and he felt the
+bitter joy of the man who sacrifices himself, taking up his cross.</p>
+
+<p>His mind was made up. He would flee from the woman. He would not see her
+again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IIIa" id="IIIa"></a>III</h2>
+
+
+<p>And he did not see her; he did not see her for two days. But on the
+third there came a letter in a long blue envelope scented with a perfume
+that made him tremble.</p>
+
+<p>The countess complained of his absence in affectionate terms. She needed
+to see him, she had many things to tell him. A real love-letter which
+the artist hastened to hide, for fear that if any one read it, he would
+suspect what was not yet true.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales was indignant.</p>
+
+<p>"I will go to see her," he said to himself, walking up and down the
+studio. "But it will be only to give her a piece of my mind, and have
+done with her once and for all. If she thinks she is going to play with
+me, she is mistaken; she doesn't know that, when I want to be, I am like
+stone."</p>
+
+<p>Poor master! While in one corner of his mind he was formulating this
+cruel determination to be a man of stone, in the other a sweet voice was
+murmuring seductively:</p>
+
+<p>"Go quickly, take advantage of the opportunity. Perhaps she has
+repented. She is waiting for you; she is going to be yours."</p>
+
+<p>And the artist hastened to the countess's anxiously. Nothing. She
+complained of his absence with affected sadness. She liked him so much!
+She needed to see him, she could not have any peace as long as she felt
+that he was offended with her on account of the other afternoon. And
+they spent nearly two hours together in the private room she used as an
+office, until at the end of the afternoon the serious friends of the
+countess began to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> arrive, her coterie of mute worshipers and last of
+all Monteverde with the calm of a man who has nothing to fear.</p>
+
+<p>The painter left the house. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened
+except that he had twice kissed the countess's hand; the conventional
+caress and nothing more. Whenever he tried to go farther, moving his
+lips along her arm, she checked him imperiously.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall be angry, master, and not receive you any more alone! You are
+not keeping the agreement!"</p>
+
+<p>Renovales protested. They had not made any agreement; but Concha managed
+to calm him instantly by asking about Milita, praising her beauty,
+inquiring for poor Josephina, so good, so lovable, showing great concern
+for her health and promising to call on her soon. And the master was
+restrained, tormented by remorse, not daring to make any new advances,
+until his discomfort had disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>He continued to visit the countess, as before. He felt that he must see
+her; he had grown accustomed to her enthusiastic praise of his artistic
+merits.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes the impetuous nature of his youthful days awakened and he
+longed to rid himself of this shameful chain. The woman had bewitched
+him; she sent for him without any reason, she seemed to delight in
+making him suffer, she needed him for a plaything. She spoke of
+Monteverde and their love with quiet cynicism, as if the doctor were her
+husband. She had to confide the secrets of her life to some one, with
+that imperious na&iuml;vet&eacute; that forces the guilty to confess. Little by
+little she let the master into the secret of her passion, telling him
+unblushingly of the most intimate details of their meetings, which were
+often in her own house. They took advantage of the blindness of the
+count, who seemed almost stunned by his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> failure to receive the Fleece;
+they took a morbid delight in the danger of being surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you this, Mariano, I don't know why it is I feel as I do toward
+you; I like you as a brother. No, not as a brother, rather as a
+confidential woman friend."</p>
+
+<p>When Renovales was alone, he despised Concha's frankness. It was just as
+people believed; she was very attractive, very pretty, but absolutely
+lacking in scruples. As for himself, he heaped insults on himself in the
+slang of his Bohemian days, comparing himself with all the horned
+animals he could think of.</p>
+
+<p>"I won't go there again. It's disgraceful. A pretty part you are
+playing, master!"</p>
+
+<p>But he had hardly been absent two days when Marie, the Countess's French
+maid, appeared with the scented letter, or it arrived in the mail, where
+it stood out scandalously among the other envelopes of the master's
+correspondence.</p>
+
+<p>"Curse that woman!" exclaimed Renovales, hastening to hide the showy
+note. "What a lack of prudence. One of these fine days, Josephina will
+discover these letters."</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner, in his blind devotion to his idol whom he considered
+irresistible, supposed that the Alberca woman was madly in love with the
+master and shook his head sadly.</p>
+
+<p>"This will have a bad end, Mariano. You ought to break with her. The
+peace of your home! You are piling up trouble for yourself."</p>
+
+<p>The letters were always alike; endless complaints at his short absences.
+"<i>Cher ma&icirc;tre</i>, I could not sleep last night, thinking of you," and she
+ended with "Your admirer and good friend, Coquillerosse," a <i>nom de
+guerre</i> she had adopted for her correspondence with the artist.</p>
+
+<p>She wrote in a disordered style, at unusual hours, just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span> as her fancy
+and her abnormal nervous system prompted. Sometimes she dated her letter
+at three in the morning, she could not sleep, got out of bed and to pass
+the sleepless hours filled four sheets of paper (with the facility of
+despair) in her fine hand, addressed to her good friend, talking to him
+of the count, of what her acquaintances said, telling him the latest
+gossip about the Court, lamenting the doctor's coldness. At other times,
+there were only four brief, desperate lines. "Come at once, dear
+Mariano. A very urgent matter."</p>
+
+<p>And the master, leaving his tasks early in the morning, ran to the
+countess' house, where she received him still in bed in her fragrant
+chamber which the gentleman with honorary crosses had not entered for
+many years.</p>
+
+<p>The painter came in in great anxiety, disturbed at the possibility of
+some terrible event, and Concha, tossing about between the embroidered
+sheets, tucking in the golden wisps of hair that escaped from her lace
+cap, talked and talked, as incoherently as a bird sings, as if the
+silence of the night had hopelessly confused her ideas. A great idea had
+occurred to her; during her sleep she had thought out an absolutely
+original scientific theory that would delight Monteverde. And she
+explained it earnestly to the master, who nodded his approval without
+understanding a word, thinking it was a pity to see such an attractive
+mouth uttering such follies.</p>
+
+<p>At other times she would talk to him about the speech she was preparing
+for a fair of the Woman's Association, the <i>magnum opus</i> of her
+presidency; and drawing her ivory arms from under the sheet with a
+calmness that dazed Renovales, she would pick up from the nearby table
+some sheets of paper scribbled with pencil, and ask her friend to tell
+her who was the greatest painter in the world, for she had left a blank
+to fill in with this name.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After an hour of incessant chatter while the artist watched her silently
+with greedy eyes, he finally came to the urgent matter, the desperate
+summons that had made the master leave his work. It was always an affair
+of life or death, compromises in which her honor was at stake. Sometimes
+she wanted him to paint some little thing on the fan of a foreign lady
+who was eager to take away from Spain some souvenir of the great master.
+The person in question had asked her at a diplomatic soir&eacute;e the night
+before, knowing her friendship with Renovales. Or she had sent for him
+to ask him for some little sketch, a daub, any one of the little things
+that lay in the corner of his studio for a bazaar of the Association for
+the Benefit of Fallen Women, whom the countess and her friends were very
+eager to rescue.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't put on such a wry face, master, don't be stingy. You must expect
+to sacrifice something for friendship. Everybody thinks that I have
+great power over the famous artist, and they ask me favors and are
+constantly getting me into difficulty. They don't know you, they don't
+realize how perverse, how rebellious you are, you horrid man!"</p>
+
+<p>And she let him kiss her hand, smiling condescendingly. But as she felt
+the touch of his lips and his beard on her arm she struggled to free
+herself, half-laughing, half-trembling.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me go, Mariano! I'll scream! I'll call Marie! I won't receive you
+again in my bedroom. You aren't worthy of being trusted. Quiet, master,
+or I'll tell Josephina everything."</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes when Renovales came, full of alarm at her summons, he found
+her pale, with dark circles under her eyes, as if she had spent the
+night weeping. When she saw the master her tears began to flow again. It
+was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> pique, deep pain at Monteverde's coldness. He passed whole days
+without seeing her; he even went so far as to say that women are a
+hindrance to serious study. Oh, these scholars! And she, madly devoted
+to him, submissive as a slave, putting up with his whimsical moods,
+worshiping him with that ardent passion of a woman who is older than her
+lover and appreciates her own inferiority!</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Renovales. Never fall in love. It is hell. You do not know the
+happiness you enjoy in not understanding these things."</p>
+
+<p>But the master, indifferent to her tears, enraged by her confidences,
+walked up and down gesticulating, just as if he were in his studio, and
+he spoke to the countess with brutal frankness, as he would to a woman
+who had revealed all her secrets and weaknesses. What difference did all
+that make to him? Had she sent for him to tell him such stuff? She
+grieved with childish sighs from the bed. She was alone in the world,
+she was very unhappy. The master was her only friend; he was her father,
+her brother. To whom could she tell her troubles if not to him? And
+taking courage at the painter's silence who finally was moved by her
+tears, she recovered her boldness and expressed her wish. He must go to
+Monteverde, give him a good, heart-to-heart lecture, so that he would be
+good and not make her suffer. The doctor respected him highly; he was
+one of his greatest admirers; she was certain that a few words of the
+master would be enough to bring him back like a lamb. He must show him
+that she was not alone, that she had some one to defend her, that no one
+could make sport of her with impunity.</p>
+
+<p>But before she finished her request, the painter was walking around the
+bed waving his arms, cursing in the violence of his excitement.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"That's the last straw! One of these days you'll be asking me to shine
+his boots. Are you mad, woman? What are you thinking of? You have enough
+accommodating people already in the count. Don't drag me into it!"</p>
+
+<p>But she rolled over in bed, weeping disconsolately. She had no friends
+left! The master was like the others; if he would not accede to her
+requests, their friendship was over. All talk, oaths, and then not the
+least sacrifice!</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she sat up, frowning angrily with the coldness of an offended
+queen. She knew him at last, she had made a mistake in counting on him.
+And as Renovales, confused at her anger, tried to offer excuse, she
+interrupted him haughtily.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you, or will you not? One, two&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Yes, he would do what she wanted; he had sunk so low that it did not
+matter if he went a little farther. He would lecture the doctor,
+throwing in his face his stupidity in scorning such happiness,&mdash;he said
+this with all his heart, his voice trembling with envy. What else did
+his fair despot want? She might ask without fear. If it was necessary he
+would challenge the count, with all his decorations, to single combat
+and would kill him so that she might be free to join her little doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"You joker," cried Concha, smiling at her triumph. "You are as nice as
+can be but you are very perverse. Come here, you horrid man."</p>
+
+<p>And lifting a lock of his heavy hair with her hand, she kissed him on
+the forehead, laughing at the start the painter gave at her caress. He
+felt his legs trembling, then his arms strove to embrace the warm,
+scented body, that seemed to slip from him in its delicate covering.</p>
+
+<p>"It was on the forehead," cried Concha in protest.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> "A sister's caress,
+Mariano. Stop! You're hurting me! I'll call!"</p>
+
+<p>And she called, realizing her weakness, seeing that she was on the point
+of being overcome in his fierce, masterly grasp. The electric bell
+sounded out of the maze of corridors and rooms and the door opened.
+Marie entered in a black dress with a white apron and a lace cap,
+discreet and silent. Her pale, smiling face, accustomed to see
+everything, to guess everything, did not reveal the slightest
+impression.</p>
+
+<p>The countess stretched out her hand to Renovales, calmly and
+affectionately, as if the entrance of the maid had found her saying
+good-by. She was sorry that he must go so soon, she would see him in the
+evening at the Opera.</p>
+
+<p>When the painter breathed the air of the street and jostled against the
+people, he felt as if he were awakening from a nightmare. He loathed
+himself. "You're showing off finely, master." His weakness that made him
+give in to all of the countess's demands, his base acquiescence in
+serving as an intermediary between her and her lover was sickening now.
+But he still felt the touch of her kiss on his forehead; he still
+breathed the atmosphere of the bedroom, heavy with perfume. Optimism
+overcame him. The affair was not going badly. However disagreeable the
+path was, it would lead to the realization of his desire.</p>
+
+<p>Many evenings Renovales went to the Opera, in obedience to Concha, who
+wanted to see him, and spent whole acts in the back of her box,
+conversing with her. Milita laughed at this change in the habits of her
+father, who used to go to bed early, so as to be able to work early in
+the morning. She was the one who, charged with the household affairs on
+account of her mother's constant illness, helped him to put on his
+dress-coat, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> amid caresses and laughter combed his hair and adjusted
+his tie.</p>
+
+<p>"Papa, dear. I shouldn't know you, you're getting dissipated. When are
+you going to take me with you?"</p>
+
+<p>The artist excused himself seriously. It was a duty of his profession;
+artists must go into society. And as for taking her with him&mdash;some other
+time. He had to go alone this time, he had to talk to a great many
+people at the theater.</p>
+
+<p>Another change took place in him that provoked joyful comments on the
+part of Milita. Papa was getting young.</p>
+
+<p>Under irreverent trimmings, every week his hair became shorter, his
+beard diminished until only a light remnant remained of that tangled
+growth that gave him such a ferocious appearance. He did not want to
+look like other men, he must preserve the exterior that stamped him as
+an artist, so that people might not pass by the great Renovales without
+recognizing him. But he managed, while keeping within this desire, to
+approach and mingle with the fashionably dressed young men who
+frequented the countess's house.</p>
+
+<p>Other people too noticed this change. Students in the School of Fine
+Arts pointed him out from the gallery of the Opera-house or stopped on
+the sidewalk when they saw him at night, with a shining silk hat on his
+carefully trimmed hair and the expanse of shirt-front showing in his
+unbuttoned overcoat. The boys in their simple admiration imagined the
+great master thundering before his easel, as savage, fierce and
+intractable as Michael Angelo in his studio. And so when they saw him
+looking so differently, their eyes followed him enviously. "What a good
+time the master is having!" And they fancied the great ladies disputing
+over him, believing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> in perfect faith that no woman could resist a man
+who painted so well.</p>
+
+<p>His enemies, established artists but who were inferior to him, growled
+in their conversations. "Four-flusher, prig! He wasn't satisfied with
+making so much money and now he's playing the sport among the
+aristocracy, to pick up more portraits, to get all he can out of his
+signature."</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner, who sometimes stayed at the house in the evenings, to keep the
+ladies company, smiled sadly as he saw him leave, shaking his head.
+"It's bad. Mariano married too soon. Now that he is almost an old man,
+he's doing what he didn't do in his youth in his fever for work and
+glory." Many people were laughing at him already, divining his passion
+for the Alberca woman, that love without practical results, that made
+him live with her and Monteverde, acting as a good-natured mediator, a
+tolerant kindly father. When the famous master took off his mask of
+fierceness, he was a poor fellow about whom people talked with pity:
+they compared him with Hercules, dressed as a woman and spinning at the
+feet of his fair seducer.</p>
+
+<p>He had contracted a close friendship with Monteverde as a result of
+meeting him so often at the countess's. He no longer seemed foolish and
+unattractive. Renovales found in him something of the woman he loved and
+therefore his company was pleasing. He experienced that calm attraction,
+free from jealousy, that the husband of a mistress inspires in some men.
+They sat together at the theater, went to walk, conversing amiably, and
+the doctor frequently visited the artist's studio in the afternoon. This
+intimacy quite disconcerted people, for they could no longer tell with
+certainty which one was the Alberca woman's master and which the
+aspirant,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> even going so far as to believe that by a mutual agreement
+they all three lived in an ideal world.</p>
+
+<p>Monteverde admired the master and the latter, from his years and the
+superiority of his fame, assumed a paternal authority over him. He
+chided him when the countess complained of him.</p>
+
+<p>"Women!" the doctor would say with a bored expression. "You don't know
+what they are, master. They are only a hindrance to obstruct a man's
+career. You have been successful because you haven't let them dominate
+you because you are strong."</p>
+
+<p>And the poor strong man looked at Monteverde narrowly suspecting that he
+was making sport of him. He felt tempted to knock him down at the
+thought that the doctor scorned what he craved so keenly.</p>
+
+<p>Concha was more communicative with the master. She confessed to him what
+she had never dared to tell the doctor.</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you everything, Mariano. I cannot live without seeing you. Do
+you know what I think? The doctor is a sort of husband to me and you are
+the lover of my heart. Don't get excited; don't move or I'll call. I
+have spoken from my heart. I like you too much to think of the coarse
+things you want."</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes Renovales found her excited, nervous, speaking hoarsely,
+working her delicate fingers as if she wanted to scratch the air. They
+were terrible days that stirred up the whole house. Marie ran from room
+to room with her silent step, pursued by the ringing of the bells; the
+count slipped out of doors, like a frightened school-boy. Concha was
+bored, felt tired of everything, hated her life. When the painter
+appeared she would almost throw herself in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"Take me out of here, Mariano; I'm tired of it, I'm dying. This life is
+killing me. My husband! He doesn't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> count. My friends! Fools that flay
+me as soon as I leave them. The doctor! as untrustworthy as a
+weathercock. All those men in my coterie, idiots. Master, have pity on
+me. Take me far away from here. You must know some other world; artists
+know everything."</p>
+
+<p>If she only was not such a familiar figure and if people only did not
+know the master in Madrid! In her nervous excitement she formed the
+wildest projects. She wanted to go out at night arm in arm with
+Renovales. She in a shawl and a kerchief over her head and he in a cape
+and a slouch hat. She would be his grisette; she would imitate the
+carriage and stride of a woman of the streets and they would go to the
+lowest districts like two night-hawks, and they would drink, would get
+into a brawl; he would defend her and they would go and spend the night
+in the police station.</p>
+
+<p>The painter looked shocked. What nonsense! But she insisted on her wish.</p>
+
+<p>"Laugh, master, open that great mouth of yours, you ugly thing. What is
+strange about what I said? You, with all your artist's hair and soft
+hats, are humdrum, a peaceful soul that is incapable of doing anything
+original in order to amuse yourself."</p>
+
+<p>When she thought of the couple they had seen one afternoon at Moncloa,
+she grew melancholy and sentimental. She, too, thought it would be fun
+to play the grisette, to walk arm in arm with the master as if she were
+a poor dressmaker and he a clerk, to end the trip in a picnic park, and
+he would give her a ride in the green swing, while she screamed with
+pleasure, as she went up and down with her skirts whirling around her
+feet. That was not foolishness. Just the simplest, most rustic pleasure!</p>
+
+<p>What a pity that they were both so well known. But what they would do,
+at least, was to disguise themselves<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> some morning and go house-hunting
+in some low quarter, like the Rastro, as if they were a newly married
+couple. No one would recognize them in that part of Madrid. Agreed,
+master?</p>
+
+<p>And the master approved of everything. But the next day, Concha received
+him with confusion, biting her lips, until at last she broke out into
+hearty laughter at the recollection of the follies she had proposed.</p>
+
+<p>"How you must laugh at me! Some days I am perfectly crazy."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales did not conceal his assent. Yes, she was a trifle crazy. But
+with all her absurdities that made him alternate between hope and
+despair, she was more attractive, with her merry nonsense, and her
+transitory fits of anger, than the woman at home, implacable, silent,
+shunning him with ceaseless repugnance, but following him everywhere
+with her weeping, uncanny eyes, that became as cutting as steel, as soon
+as, out of sympathy or remorse, he gave the least evidence of
+familiarity.</p>
+
+<p>Oh, what a heavy, intolerable comedy! Before his daughter and his
+friends they had to talk to each other, and he, looking away, so that
+their eyes might not meet, scolded her gently, for not following the
+advice of the doctors. At first they had said it was neurasthenia, now
+it was diabetes, that was increasing the invalid's weakness. The master
+lamented the passive resistance she opposed to all their curative
+methods. She would follow them for a few days and then give them up with
+calm obstinacy. Her health was better than they thought: doctors could
+not cure her trouble.</p>
+
+<p>At night, when they entered the bed-chamber, a deathly silence fell on
+them; a leaden wall seemed to rise between their bodies. Here they no
+longer had to dissemble; they looked at each other face to face with
+silent hostility. Their life at night was sheer torment,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> but neither of
+them dared to change their mode of living. Their bodies could not leave
+the common bed; they found in it the places they had occupied for years.
+The habit of their wills subjected them to this room and its
+furnishings, with all its memories of the happy days of their youth.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales would fall into the deep sleep of a healthy man, tired out
+with work. His last thoughts were of the countess. He saw her in that
+vague mist that shrouds the portal of unconsciousness; he went to sleep,
+thinking of what he would say to her the next day. And his dreams were
+in keeping with his desires, for he saw her standing on a pedestal, in
+all the majesty of her nakedness, surpassing the marble of the most
+famous statues with the life of her flesh. When he awakened suddenly and
+stretched out his arms, he touched the body of his companion, small,
+stiff, burning with the fire of fever or icy with deathly cold. He
+divined that she was not asleep. She spent the nights without closing
+her eyes, but she did not move, as if all her strength was concentrated
+on something that she watched in the darkness with a hypnotic stare. She
+was like a corpse. There was the obstacle, the leaden weight, the
+phantom that checked the other woman when sometimes in a moment of
+hesitation, she leaned toward him, on the point of falling. And the
+terrible longing, the hideous thought came forth again in all its
+ugliness, announcing that it was not dead, that it had only hidden in
+the den of his brain, to rise more cruelly, more insolently.</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?" argued the rejected spirit, scattering in his fancy the
+golden dust of dreams.</p>
+
+<p>Love, fame, joy, a new artistic life, the rejuvenation of Doctor
+Faustus; he might expect everything, if kindly death would but come to
+help him, breaking the chain that bound him to sadness and sickness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But straightway a protest would arise within him. Though he lived like
+an infidel, he still had a religious soul that in the trying moments of
+his life led him to call on all the superhuman and miraculous powers as
+if they were under an inevitable obligation to come to his aid. "Lord,
+take this horrible thought from me. Take away this temptation. Don't let
+her die. Let her live, even if I perish."</p>
+
+<p>And the following day, filled with remorse, he would go to some doctors,
+friends of his, to consult with them minutely. He would stir up the
+house, organizing the cure according to a vast plan, distributing the
+medicines by hours. Then he would calmly return to his work, to his
+artistic prejudices, to his passionate longing, forgetting his
+determinations, thinking his wife's life was already saved.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon after luncheon, she came into the studio and as the master
+looked at her, a sense of anxiety crept over him. It was a long time
+since Josephina had entered the room while he was working.</p>
+
+<p>She would not sit down; standing beside the easel she spoke slowly and
+meekly to her husband, without looking at him. Renovales was frightened
+at this simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>"Mariano, I have come to talk to you about our daughter."</p>
+
+<p>She wanted her to be married: it must come some day and the sooner, the
+better. She would die before long and she wanted to leave the world with
+the assurance that her daughter was well settled.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales felt forced to protest loudly with all the vehemence of a man
+who is not very sure of what he is saying. Shucks! Die! Why should she
+die? Her health was better now than it had ever been. The only thing she
+needed was to heed what the doctors told her.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"I shall die before long," she repeated coldly; "I shall die and you
+will be left in peace. You know it."</p>
+
+<p>The painter tried to protest with a greater show of righteous
+indignation but his eyes met his wife's cold look. Then he contented
+himself with shrugging his shoulders in a resigned way. He did not want
+to argue; he must keep calm. He had to paint; he must go out that
+afternoon as usual on important business.</p>
+
+<p>"Very well, go ahead. Milita is going to be married. And to whom?"</p>
+
+<p>Led by his desire to maintain his authority, to take the lead, and
+because of his long-standing affection for his pupil, he hastened to
+speak of him. Was Soldevilla the suitor? A good boy with a future ahead
+of him. He worshiped Milita; his dejection when she treated him ill was
+pitiful. He would make an excellent husband.</p>
+
+<p>Josephina cut short her husband's chatter in a cold, contemptuous tone.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want any painters for my daughter; you know it. Her mother has
+had enough of them."</p>
+
+<p>Milita was going to marry L&oacute;pez de Sosa. The matter was already settled
+as far as she was concerned. The boy had spoken to her and, assured of
+her approval, would ask the father.</p>
+
+<p>"But does she love him? Do you think, Josephina, that these things can
+be arranged to suit you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she loves him; she is suited and wants to be married. Besides she
+is your daughter; she would accept the other man just as readily. What
+she wants is freedom, to get away from her mother, not to live in the
+unhappy atmosphere of my ill health. She doesn't say so, she doesn't
+even know that she thinks it, but I see through her."</p>
+
+<p>And as if, while she spoke of her daughter, she could not maintain the
+coldness she had toward her husband,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span> she raised her hand to her eyes,
+to wipe away the silent tears.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales had recourse to rudeness in order to get out of the
+difficulty. It was all nonsense; an invention of her diseased mind. She
+ought to think of getting well and nothing else. What was she crying
+for! Did she want to marry her daughter to that automobile enthusiast?
+Well, get him. She did not want to? Well, let the girl stay at home.</p>
+
+<p>She was the one who had charge; no one was hindering her. Have the
+marriage as soon as possible? He was a mere cipher, and there was no
+reason for asking his advice. But steady, shucks! He had to work; he had
+to go out. And when he saw Josephina leaving the studio to weep
+somewhere else, he gave a snort of satisfaction, glad to have escaped
+from this difficult scene so successfully.</p>
+
+<p>L&oacute;pez de Sosa was all right. An excellent boy! Or anyone else. He did
+not have time to give to such matters. Other things occupied his
+attention.</p>
+
+<p>He accepted his future son-in-law, and for several evenings he stayed at
+home to lend a sort of patriarchal air to the family parties. Milita and
+her betrothed talked at one end of the drawing-room. Cotoner, in the
+full bliss of digestion, strove with his jests to bring a faint smile to
+the face of the master's wife, but she stayed in the corner, shivering
+with cold. Renovales, in a smoking jacket, read the papers, soothed by
+the charming atmosphere of his quiet home. If the countess could only
+see him!</p>
+
+<p>One night the Alberca woman's name was mentioned in the drawing-room.
+Milita was running over from memory the list of friends of the
+family,&mdash;prominent ladies who would not fail to honor her approaching
+marriage with some magnificent present.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Concha won't come," said the girl. "It's a long time since she has been
+here."</p>
+
+<p>There was a painful silence, as if the countess's name chilled the
+atmosphere. Cotoner hummed a tune, pretending to be thinking of
+something else; L&oacute;pez de Sosa began to look for a piece of music on the
+piano, talking about it to change the subject. He too seemed to be aware
+of the matter.</p>
+
+<p>"She doesn't come because she doesn't have to come," said Josephina from
+her corner. "Your father manages to see her every day, so that she won't
+forget us."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales raised his eyes in protest, as if he were awakening from a
+calm sleep. Josephina's gaze was fixed on him, not angry, but mocking
+and cruel. It reflected the same scorn with which she had wounded him on
+that unhappy night. She no longer said anything, but the master read in
+those eyes:</p>
+
+<p>"It is useless, my good man. You are mad over her, you pursue her, but
+she belongs to other men. I know her of old. I know all about it. Oh,
+how people laugh at you! How I laugh! How I scorn you!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IVa" id="IVa"></a>IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>The beginning of summer saw the wedding of the daughter of Renovales to
+L&oacute;pez de Sosa. The papers published whole columns on the event, in
+which, according to some of the reporters, "the glory and splendor of
+art were united with the prestige of aristocracy and fortune." No one
+remembered now the nickname "Pickled Herring."</p>
+
+<p>The master Renovales did things well. He had only one daughter and he
+was eager to marry her with royal pomp; eager that Madrid and all Spain
+should know of the affair, that a ray of the glory her father had won
+might fall on Milita.</p>
+
+<p>The list of gifts was long. All the friends of the master, society
+ladies, political leaders, famous artists, and even royal personages,
+appeared in it with their corresponding presents. There was enough to
+fill a store. Both of the studios for visitors were converted into show
+rooms with countless tables loaded with articles, a regular fair of
+clothes and jewelry, that was visited by all of Milita's girl friends,
+even the most distant and forgotten, who came to congratulate her, pale
+with envy.</p>
+
+<p>The Countess of Alberca, too, sent a huge, showy gift, as if she did not
+want to remain unnoticed among the friends of the house. Doctor
+Monteverde was represented by a modest remembrance, though he had no
+other connection with the family than his friendship with the master.</p>
+
+<p>The wedding was celebrated at the house, where one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> of the studios was
+converted into a chapel. Cotoner had a hand in everything that concerned
+the ceremony, delighted to be able to show his influence with the people
+of the Church.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales took charge of the arrangements of the altar, eager to display
+the touch of an artist even in the least details. On a background of
+ancient tapestries he placed an old triptych, a medieval cross; all the
+articles of worship which filled his studio as decorations, cleaned now
+from dust and cobwebs, recovered for a few moments their religious
+importance.</p>
+
+<p>A variegated flood of flowers filled the master's house. Renovales
+insisted on having them everywhere; he had sent to Valencia and Murcia
+for them in reckless quantities; they hung on the door-frames, and along
+the cornices; they lay in huge clusters on the tables and in the
+corners. They even swung in pagan garlands from one column of the fa&ccedil;ade
+to another, arousing the curiosity of the passers-by, who crowded
+outside of the iron fence,&mdash;women in shawls, boys with great baskets on
+their heads who stood in open-mouthed wonder before the strange sight,
+waiting to see what was going on in that unusual house, following the
+coming and going of the servants who carried in music stands and two
+base viols, hidden in varnished cases.</p>
+
+<p>Early in the morning Renovales was hurrying about with two ribbons
+across his shirt front and a constellation of golden, flashing stars
+covering one whole side of his coat. Cotoner, too, had put on the
+insignia of his various Papal Orders. The master looked at himself in
+all the mirrors with considerable satisfaction, admiring equally his
+friend. They must look handsome; a celebration like this they would
+never see again. He plied his companion with incessant questions, to
+make sure that nothing had been overlooked in the preparations.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span> The
+master Pedraza, a great friend of Renovales, was to conduct the
+orchestra. They had gathered all the best players in Madrid, for the
+most part from the Opera. The choir was a good one, but the only notable
+artists they had been able to secure were people who made the capital
+their residence. The season was not the best; the theaters were closed.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner continued to explain the measures he had taken. Promptly at ten
+the Nuncio, Monsignore Orlandi,&mdash;a great friend of his&mdash;would arrive; a
+handsome chap, still young, whom he had met in Rome when he was attached
+to the Vatican. A word on Cotoner's part was all that was necessary to
+persuade him to do them the honor of marrying the children. Friends are
+useful at times! And the painter of the popes, proud of his sudden rise
+to importance, went from room to room, arranging everything, followed by
+the master who approved of his orders.</p>
+
+<p>In the studio, the orchestra and the table for the luncheon were set.
+The other rooms were for the guests. Was anything forgotten? The two
+artists looked at the altar with its dark tapestries, and its
+candelabra, crosses and reliquaries, of dull, old gold that seemed to
+absorb the light rather than reflect it. Nothing was lacking. Ancient
+fabrics and garlands of flowers covered the walls, hiding the master's
+studies in color, unfinished pictures, profane works that could not be
+tolerated in the discreet, harmonious atmosphere of that chapel-like
+room. The floor was partly covered with costly rugs, Persian and
+Moorish. In front of the altar were two praying desks and behind them,
+for the more important guests, all the luxurious chairs of the studio:
+white armchairs of the 18th Century, embroidered with pastoral scenes,
+Greek settles, benches of carved oak and Vene<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>tian chairs with high
+backs, the bizarre confusion of an antique shop.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly Cotoner started back as if he were shocked. How careless! A
+fine thing it would have been if he had not noticed it! At the end of
+the studio, opposite the altar that screened a large part of the window,
+and directly in its light, stood a huge, white, naked woman. It was the
+"Venus de Medici," a superb piece of marble that Renovales had brought
+from Italy. Its pagan beauty in its dazzling whiteness seemed to
+challenge the deathly yellow of the religious objects that filled the
+other end of the studio. Accustomed to see it, the two artists had
+passed in front of it several times without noticing its nakedness that
+seemed more insolent and triumphant now that the studio was converted
+into an oratory.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner began to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"What a scandal if we hadn't seen it! What would the ladies have said!
+My friend Orlandi would have thought that you did it on purpose, for he
+considers you rather lax morally. Come, my boy, let's get something to
+cover up this lady."</p>
+
+<p>After much searching in the disorder of the studio, they found a piece
+of Indian cotton, scrawled with elephants and lotus flowers; they
+stretched it over the goddess's head, so that it covered her down to her
+feet and there it stood, like a mystery, a riddle for the guests.</p>
+
+<p>They were beginning to arrive. Outside of the house, at the fence
+sounded the stamping of the horses, the slam of doors as they closed. In
+the distance rumbled other carriages, drawing nearer every minute. The
+swish of silk on the floor sounded in the hall, and the servants ran
+back and forth, receiving wraps and putting numbers on them, as at the
+theater, to stow them away in the parlor that had been converted into a
+coat-room. Cotoner directed the servants, smooth shaven or wearing
+side-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>whiskers, and clad in faded dress-suits. Renovales meanwhile was
+wreathed in smiles, bowing graciously, greeting the ladies who came in
+their black or white mantillas, grasping the hands of the men, some of
+whom wore brilliant uniforms.</p>
+
+<p>The master felt elated at this procession which ceremoniously passed
+through his drawing-rooms and studios. In his ears, the swish of skirts,
+the movement of fans, the greetings, the praise of his good taste
+sounded like caressing music. Everyone came with the same satisfaction
+in seeing and being seen, which people reveal on a first night at the
+theater or at some brilliant reception. Good music, presence of the
+Nuncio, preparations for the luncheon which they seemed to sniff
+already, and besides, the certainty of seeing their names in print the
+next day, perhaps of having their picture in some illustrated magazine.
+Emilia Renovales' wedding was an event.</p>
+
+<p>Among the crowd of people that continued to pour in were seen several
+young men, hastily holding up their cameras. They were going to have
+snap-shots! Those who retained some bitterness against the artist,
+remembering how dearly they had paid him for a portrait, now pardoned
+him generously and excused his robbery. There was an artist that lived
+like a gentleman! And Renovales went from one side to another, shaking
+hands, bowing, talking incoherently, not knowing in which direction to
+turn. For a moment, while he stood in the hall, he saw a bit of sunlit
+garden, covered with flowers and beyond a fence a black mass: the
+admiring, smiling throng. He breathed the odor of roses and subtle
+perfumes, and felt the rapture of optimism flood his breast. Life was a
+great thing. The poor rabble, crowded together outside, made him recall
+with pride the blacksmith's son. Heavens, how he had risen! He felt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>
+grateful to those wealthy, idle people who supported his well-being; he
+made every effort so that they might lack nothing, and overwhelmed
+Cotoner with his suggestions. The latter turned on the master with the
+arrogance of one who is in authority. His place was inside, with the
+guests. He need not mind him, for he knew his duties. And turning his
+back on Mariano, he issued orders to the servants and showed the way to
+the new arrivals, recognizing their station at a glance. "This way,
+gentlemen."</p>
+
+<p>It was a group of musicians and he led them through a servants' hallway
+so that they might get to their stands without having to mingle with the
+guests. Then he turned to scold a crowd of bakerboys, who were late in
+bringing the last shipments of the luncheon and advanced through the
+assemblage, raising the great, wicker baskets over the heads of the
+ladies.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner left his place when he saw rising from the stairway a plush hat
+with gold tassels over a pale face, then a silk cassock with purple sash
+and buttons, flanked by two others, black and modest.</p>
+
+<p><i>"Oh, monsignore! Monsignore Orlandi! Va bene? Va bene?"</i></p>
+
+<p>He kissed his hand with a profound reverence, and after inquiring
+anxiously for his health, as if he had not seen him the day before,
+started off, opening a passage way in the crowded drawing-rooms.</p>
+
+<p>"The Nuncio! The Nuncio of His Holiness!"</p>
+
+<p>The men, with the decorum of decent persons, who know how to show
+respect for dignitaries, stopped laughing and talking to the ladies, and
+bent forward, as he passed, to take that delicate, pale hand, which
+looked like the hand of a lady of the olden days, and kiss the huge
+stone of its ring. The ladies, with moist eyes, looked for a moment at
+Monsignor Orlandi,&mdash;a distinguished prel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>ate, a diplomat of the Church,
+a noble of the Old Roman nobility,&mdash;tall, thin, pale as chalk, with
+black hair and imperious eyes in which there was an intense flash of
+flame.</p>
+
+<p>He moved with the haughty grace of a bull-fighter. The lips of the women
+rested eagerly on his hand, while he gazed with enigmatical eyes at the
+line of graceful necks bowed before him. Cotoner continued ahead,
+opening a passage, proud of his part, elated at the respect which his
+illustrious friend inspired. What a wonderful thing religion was!</p>
+
+<p>He accompanied him to the sacristy, which once was the dressing-room for
+the models. He remained outside, discreetly, but every other minute some
+one of the Nuncio's attendants came out in search of him,&mdash;sprightly
+young fellows with a feminine carriage and a faint suggestion of perfume
+about them, who looked on the artist with respect, believing he was an
+important personage. They called to Signor Cotoner, asking him to help
+them find something Monsignor had sent the day before, and the Bohemian,
+in order to avoid further requests, finally went into the dressing-room,
+to assist in the sacred toilette of his illustrious friend.</p>
+
+<p>In the drawing-rooms the company suddenly eddied, the conversation
+ceased, and a throng of people, after crowding in front of one of the
+doors, opened to leave a passage.</p>
+
+<p>The bride, leaning on the arm of a distinguished gentleman, who was the
+best man, entered, clad in white, ivory white her dress, snow white her
+veil, pearl white her flowers. The only bright color she showed was the
+healthy pink of her cheeks and the red of her lips. She smiled to her
+friends, not bashfully nor timidly, but with an air of satisfaction at
+the festivity and the fact that she was its principal object. After her
+came the groom,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> giving his arm to his new mother, the painter's wife,
+smaller than ever in her party-gown that was too large for her, dazed by
+this noisy event that broke the painful calm of her existence.</p>
+
+<p>And the father? Renovales was missing in the formal entrance; he was
+very busy attending to the guests; a gracious smile, half hidden behind
+a fan, detained him at one end of the drawing-room. He had felt some one
+touch his shoulder and, turning around, he saw the solemn Count of
+Alberca with his wife on his arm. The count had congratulated him on the
+appearance of the studios; all very artistic. The countess had
+congratulated him too, in a jesting tone, on the importance of this
+event in his life. The moment of retiring, of saying good-by to youth
+had come.</p>
+
+<p>"They are shelving you, dear master. Pretty soon they will be calling
+you grandfather."</p>
+
+<p>She laughed with pleasure at the flush of pain these pitying words
+caused him. But before Mariano could answer the countess, he felt
+himself dragged away by Cotoner. What was he doing there? The bride and
+groom were at the altar; Monsignor was beginning the service; the
+father's chair was still vacant. And Renovales passed a tiresome
+half-hour following the ceremonies of the prelate with an absent-minded
+glance. Far away in the last of the studios, the stringed instruments
+struck a loud chord and a melody of earthly mysticism poured forth from
+room to room in the atmosphere laden with the perfume of crumpled roses.</p>
+
+<p>Then a sweet voice, supported by others more harsh, began a prayer that
+had the voluptuous rhythm of an Italian serenade. A passing wave of
+sentimentality seemed to stir the guests. Cotoner, who stood near the
+altar, in case Monsignor should need something, felt moved to tenderness
+by the music, by the sight of that distin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>guished gathering, by the
+dramatic gravity with which the Roman prelate conducted the ceremonies
+of his profession. Seeing Milita so fair, kneeling, with her eyes
+lowered under her snowy veil, the poor Bohemian blinked to keep back the
+tears. He felt just as if he were marrying his own daughter. He who had
+not had one!</p>
+
+<p>Renovales sat up, seeking the countess's eyes above the white and black
+mantillas. Sometimes he found them resting on him with a mocking
+expression, at other times he saw them seeking Monteverde in the crowd
+of gentlemen that filled the doorway.</p>
+
+<p>There was one moment when the painter paid attention to the ceremony.
+How long it was! The music had ceased; Monsignor, with his back to the
+altar, advanced several steps toward the newly married couple, holding
+out his hands, as if he were going to speak to them. There was a
+profound hush and the voice of the Italian began to sound in the silence
+with a sing-song mellowness, hesitating over some words, supplying them
+with others of his own language. He explained to the man and wife their
+duties and expatiated, with oratorical fire, in his praises of their
+families. He spoke little of him; he was a representative of the upper
+classes, from which rise the leaders of men; he knew his duties. She was
+the descendant of a great painter whose fame was universal, of an
+artist.</p>
+
+<p>As he mentioned art, the Roman prelate was fired with enthusiasm, as if
+he were speaking of his own stock, with the deep interest of a man whose
+life had been spent among the splendid half-pagan decorations of the
+Vatican. "Next to God, there is nothing like art." And after this
+statement, with which he attributed to the bride a nobility superior to
+that of many of the people who were watching her, he eulogized the
+virtues of her parents. In admirable terms, he commended their pure love
+and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> Christian fidelity, ties with which they approached together,
+Renovales and his wife, the portal of old age and which surely would
+accompany them till death. The painter bowed his head, afraid that he
+would meet Concha's mocking glance. He could hear Josephina's stifled
+sobs, with her face hidden in the lace of her mantilla. Cotoner felt
+called upon to second the prelate's praises with discreet words of
+approval.</p>
+
+<p>Then the orchestra noisily began Mendelssohn's "Wedding March"; the
+chairs ground on the floor as they were pushed back; the ladies rushed
+toward the bride and a buzz of congratulations, shouted over the heads
+of the company, and of noisy efforts to be the first to reach her,
+drowned out the vibration of the strings and the heavy blast of the
+brasses. Monsignor, whose importance disappeared as soon as the ceremony
+was over, made his way with his attendants to the dressing-room, passing
+unnoticed through the throng. The bride smiled with a resigned air amid
+the circle of feminine arms that squeezed her and friendly lips that
+showered kisses on her. She expressed surprise at the simplicity of the
+ceremony. Was that all there was to it? Was she really married?</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner saw Josephina making her way across the room, looking
+impatiently among the shoulders of the guests, her face tinged with a
+hectic flush. His instinct of a master of ceremonies warned him that
+danger was at hand.</p>
+
+<p>"Take my arm, Josephina. Let's go outside for a breath of fresh air.
+This is unbearable."</p>
+
+<p>She took his arm but instead of following him, she dragged him among the
+people who crowded around her daughter until at last, seeing the
+Countess of Alberca, she stopped. Her prudent friend trembled. Just what
+he thought&mdash;she was looking for the other woman.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Josephina, Josephina! Remember that this is Milita's wedding!"</p>
+
+<p>But his advice was useless. Concha, seeing her old friend, ran toward
+her. "Dear! So long since I've seen you! A kiss&mdash;another." And she
+kissed her effusively. The little woman made one attempt to resist; but
+then she submitted, dejectedly, smiling sadly, overcome by habit and
+training. She returned her kisses coldly with an indifferent expression.
+She did not hate Concha. If her husband did not go to her, he would go
+to some one else; the real, the dangerous enemy was within him.</p>
+
+<p>The bride and groom, arm in arm, smiling and somewhat fatigued by the
+violent congratulations, passed through the groups of people and
+disappeared, followed by the last chords of the triumphal march.</p>
+
+<p>The music ceased, and the company crowded around the tables covered with
+bottles, cold meats and confections, behind which the servants hurried
+in confusion, not knowing how to serve so many a black glove or white
+hand that seized the gold-bordered plates and the little pearl knives
+crossed on the dishes. It was a smiling, well-bred riot, but they pushed
+and trod on the ladies' trains and used their elbows, as if, now the
+ceremony was over, they were all gnawed with hunger.</p>
+
+<p>Plate in hand, stifled and breathless after the assault, they scattered
+through the studios, eating even on the very altar. There were not
+servants enough for so great a gathering; the young men, seizing bottles
+of champagne, ran in all directions, filling the ladies' glasses. Amid
+great merriment the tables were pillaged. The servants covered them
+hastily and with no less speed the pyramids of sandwiches, fruits, and
+sweets came down and the bottles disappeared. The corks popped two and
+three at a time, in ceaseless crossfire.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales ran about like a servant, loaded with plates<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> and glasses,
+going back and forth from the crowded tables to the corners where some
+of his friends were seated. The Alberca woman assumed the airs of a
+mistress; she made him go and come with constant requests.</p>
+
+<p>On one of these trips he ran into his beloved pupil, Soldevilla. He had
+not seen him for a long time. He looked rather gloomy, but he found some
+consolation in looking at his waistcoat, a novelty that had made a "hit"
+among the younger set; of black velvet with embroidered flowers and gold
+buttons.</p>
+
+<p>The master felt that he ought to console him,&mdash;poor boy! For the first
+time he gave him to understand that he was "in the secret."</p>
+
+<p>"I wanted something else for my daughter, but it was impossible. Work,
+Soldevilla! Courage! We must not have any mistress except painting."</p>
+
+<p>And content to have delivered this kindly consolation, he returned to
+the countess.</p>
+
+<p>At noon, the reception ended. L&oacute;pez de Sosa and his wife reappeared in
+traveling costume; he in a fox-skin overcoat, in spite of the heat, a
+leather cap and high leggings; she in a long mackintosh that reached to
+her feet and a turban of thick veils that hid her face, like a fugitive
+from a harem.</p>
+
+<p>At the door, the groom's latest acquisition was waiting for them&mdash;an
+eighty horse-power car that he had bought for his wedding trip. They
+intended to spend the night some hundred miles away in a corner of old
+Castile, at an estate inherited from his father which he had never
+visited.</p>
+
+<p>A modern wedding, as Cotoner said, a honeymoon at full speed, without
+any witness except the discreet back of the chauffeur. The next day they
+expected to start for a tour of Europe. They would go as far as Berlin;
+perhaps farther.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>L&oacute;pez de Sosa shook hands with his friends vigorously, like a proud
+explorer, and went out to look over his car, before leaving. Milita
+submitted to her friends' caresses, carrying away her mother's tears on
+her veil.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, good-by, my daughter!"</p>
+
+<p>And the wedding was over.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales and his wife were left alone. The absence of their daughter
+seemed to increase the solitude, widening the distance between them.
+They looked at each other hostilely, reserved and gloomy, without a
+sound to break the silence and serve as a bridge to enable them to
+exchange a few words. Their life was going to be like that of convicts,
+who hate each other and walk side by side, bound with the same chain, in
+tormenting union, forced to share the same necessities of life.</p>
+
+<p>As a remedy for this isolation that filled them with misgivings they
+both thought of having the newly married couple come to live with them.
+The house was large, there was room for them all. But Milita objected,
+gently but firmly, and her husband seconded her. He must live near his
+coach house, his garage. Besides, where could he, without shocking his
+father-in-law, put his collection of treasures, his museum of bull's
+heads and bloody suits of famous toreadors, which was the envy of his
+friends and an object of great curiosity for many foreigners.</p>
+
+<p>When the painter and his wife were alone again, it seemed as though they
+had aged many years in a month; they found their house more huge, more
+deserted,&mdash;with the echoing silence of abandoned monuments. Renovales
+wanted Cotoner to move to the house, but the Bohemian declined with a
+sort of fear. He would eat with them; he would spend a great part of the
+day at their house; they were all the family he had; but he wanted to
+keep his freedom; he could not give up his numerous friends.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Well along in the summer, the master induced his wife to take her usual
+vacation. They would go to a little known Andalusian watering-place, a
+fishing village where the artist had painted many of his pictures. He
+was tired of Madrid. The Countess of Alberca was at Biarritz with her
+husband. Doctor Monteverde had gone there too, dragged along by her.</p>
+
+<p>They made the trip, but it did not last more than a month. The master
+hardly finished two canvases. Josephina felt ill. When they reached the
+watering-place, her health improved greatly. She appeared more cheerful;
+for hours at a time she would sit in the sand, getting tanned in the
+sun, craving the warmth with the eagerness of an invalid, watching the
+sea with her expressionless eyes, near her husband who painted,
+surrounded by a semicircle of wretched people. She sang, smiled
+sometimes to the master, as if she forgave him everything and wanted to
+forget, but suddenly a shadow of sadness had fallen on her; her body
+seemed paralyzed once more by weakness. She conceived an aversion to the
+bright beach, and the life of the open air, with that repugnance for
+light and noise which sometimes seizes invalids and makes them hide in
+the seclusion of their beds. She sighed for her gloomy house in Madrid.
+There she was better, she felt stronger, surrounded with memories; she
+thought she was safer from the black danger that hovered about her.
+Besides, she longed to see her daughter. Renovales must telegraph to his
+son-in-law. They had toured Europe long enough; it was time for them to
+come back; she must see Milita.</p>
+
+<p>They returned to Madrid at the end of September, and a little later the
+newly married couple joined them, delighted with their trip and still
+more delighted to be at home again. L&oacute;pez de Sosa had been greatly vexed
+by meeting people wealthier than he, who humiliated him<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> with their
+luxury. His wife wanted to live among friends who would admire her
+prosperity. She was grieved at the lack of curiosity in those countries
+where no one paid any attention to her.</p>
+
+<p>With the presence of her daughter, Josephina seemed to recover her
+spirits. The latter frequently came in the afternoon, dressed in her
+showy gowns, which were the more striking at that season when most of
+the society folk were away from Madrid, and took her mother to ride in
+the motor in the suburbs of the capital, sweeping along the dusty roads.
+Sometimes, too, Josephina summoning her courage, overcame her bodily
+weakness and went to her daughter's house, a second-story apartment in
+the Calle de Ol&ograve;zaga, admiring the modern comforts that surrounded her.</p>
+
+<p>The master seemed to be bored. He had no portraits to paint; it was
+impossible for him to do anything in Madrid while he was still saturated
+with the radiant sun and the brilliant colors of the Mediterranean
+shore. Besides, he missed the company of Cotoner, who had gone to a
+historic little town in Castile, where with a comic pride he received
+the honors due to genius, living in the palace of the prelate and
+ruining several pictures in the Cathedral by an infamous restoration.</p>
+
+<p>His loneliness made Renovales remember the Alberca woman with all the
+greater longing. She, on her part, with a constant succession of letters
+reminded the painter of her every day. She had written to him while he
+was at the little village on the coast and now she wrote to him in
+Madrid, asking him what he was doing, taking an interest in the most
+insignificant details of his daily life and telling him about her own
+with an exuberance that filled pages and pages, till every envelope
+contained a veritable history.</p>
+
+<p>The painter followed her life minute by minute, as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span> if he were with her.
+She talked to him about Darwin, concealing Monteverde under this name;
+she complained of his coldness, of his indifference, of the air of
+commiseration with which he submitted to her love. "Oh, master, I am
+very unhappy!" At other times her letter was triumphant, optimistic; she
+seemed radiant, and the painter read her satisfaction between the lines;
+he divined her intoxication after those daring meetings in her own
+house, defying the count's blindness. And she told him everything, with
+shameless, maddening familiarity, as if he were a woman, as if he could
+not be moved in the least by her confidences.</p>
+
+<p>In her last letter, Concha seemed mad with joy. The count was at San
+Sebastian, to take leave of the king and queen,&mdash;an important diplomatic
+mission. Although he was not "in line," they had chosen him as a
+representative of the most distinguished Spanish nobility to take the
+Fleece to a petty prince of a little German state. The poor gentleman,
+since he could not win the golden distinction, had to be contented with
+taking it to other men with great pomp. Renovales saw the countess's
+hand in all this. Her letters were radiant with joy. She was going to be
+left alone with Darwin, for the noble gentleman would be absent for a
+long time. Married life with the doctor, free from risk and disturbance!</p>
+
+<p>Renovales read these letters merely out of curiosity; they no longer
+awakened in him an intense or lasting interest. He had grown accustomed
+to his situation as a confidant; his desire was cooled by the frankness
+of that woman who put herself in his power, telling him all her secrets.
+Her body was the only thing he did not know; her inner life he possessed
+as did none of her lovers and he began to feel tired of this possession.
+When he finished reading these letters, he would always<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> think the same
+thing. "She is mad. What do I care about her secrets?"</p>
+
+<p>A week passed without any news from Biarritz. The papers spoke of the
+trip of the eminent Count of Alberca. He was already in Germany with all
+his retinue, getting ready to put the noble lambskin around the princely
+shoulders. Renovates smiled knowingly, without emotion, without envy, as
+he thought of the countess's silence. She had a great deal to take up
+her time, no doubt, since she was left alone.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly one afternoon he heard from her in the most unexpected manner.
+He was going out of his house, just at sunset, to take a walk on the
+heights of the Hippodrome along the Canalillo to view Madrid from the
+hill, when at the gate a messenger boy in a red coat handed him a
+letter. The painter started with surprise on recognizing Concha's
+handwriting. Four hasty, excited lines. She had just arrived that
+afternoon on the French express with her maid, Marie. She was alone at
+home. "Come, hurry. Serious news. I am dying." And the master hurried,
+though the announcement of her death did not make much impression on
+him. It was probably some trifle. He was used to the countess's
+exaggeration.</p>
+
+<p>The spacious house of the Albercas was dark, dusty and echoing like all
+deserted buildings. The only servant who remained was the concierge. His
+children were playing beside the steps as if they did not know that the
+lady of the house had returned. Upstairs the furniture was wrapped in
+gray covers, the chandeliers were veiled with cheese-cloth, the house
+and glass of the mirrors were dull and lifeless under the coating of
+dust. Marie opened the door for him and led the way through the dark,
+musty rooms, the windows closed, and the curtains down, without any
+light except what came through the cracks.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the reception hall he ran into several trunks, still unpacked,
+dropped and forgotten in the haste of arrival.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of this pilgrimage, almost feeling his way through the
+deserted house, he saw a spot of light, the door of the countess's
+bedroom, the only room that was alive, lighted up by the glow of the
+setting sun. Concha was there beside the window, buried in a chair, her
+brow contracted, her glance lost in the distance, her face tinged with
+the orange of the dying light.</p>
+
+<p>Seeing the painter she sprang to her feet, stretched out her arms and
+ran toward him, as if she were fleeing from pursuit.</p>
+
+<p>"Mariano! Master! He has gone! He has left me forever!"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice was a wail; she threw her arms around him, burying her face in
+his shoulder, wetting his beard with the tears that began to fall from
+her eyes drop by drop.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales, under the impulse of his surprise, repelled her gently and he
+made her go back to her chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Who has gone away? Who is it? Darwin?"</p>
+
+<p>Yes; he. It was all over. The countess could hardly talk; a painful sob
+interrupted her words. She was enraged to see herself deserted and her
+pride trampled on; her whole body trembled. He had fled at the height of
+their happiness, when she thought that she was surest of him, when they
+enjoyed a liberty they had never known. He was tired of her; he still
+loved her,&mdash;as he said in a letter,&mdash;but he wanted to be free to
+continue his studies. He was grateful to her for her kindness, surfeited
+with so much love, and he fled to go into seclusion abroad and become a
+great man, not thinking any more about women. This was the purpose of
+the brief lines he had sent her on his disappearance. A lie, an absolute
+lie! She saw something else. The wretch<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> had run away with a cocotte who
+was the cynosure of all eyes on the beach at Biarritz. An ugly thing,
+who had some vulgar charm about her, for all the men raved over her.
+That young "sport" was tired of respectable people. He probably was
+offended because she had not secured him the professorship, because he
+had not been made a deputy. Heavens! How was she to blame for her
+failure? Had she not done everything she could?</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Mariano. I know I am going to die. This is not love; I no longer
+care for him. I detest him! It is rage, indignation. I would like to get
+hold of the little whipper-snapper, to choke him. Think of all the
+foolish things I have done for him. Heavens! Where were my eyes!"</p>
+
+<p>As soon as she discovered that she had been deserted, her only thought
+was to find her good friend, her counselor, her "brother," to go to
+Madrid, to see Renovales and tell him everything, everything! impelled
+by the necessity of confessing to him even secrets whose memory made her
+blush.</p>
+
+<p>She had no one in the world who loved her disinterestedly, no one except
+the master, and with the panicky haste of a traveler who is lost at
+night, in the midst of a desert, she had run to him, seeking warmth and
+protection.</p>
+
+<p>This longing for protection came back to her in the master's presence.
+She went to him again, clinging to him, sobbing in hysteric fear, as if
+she were surrounded by dangers.</p>
+
+<p>"Master, you are all I have; you are my life! You won't ever leave me,
+will you? You will always be my brother?"</p>
+
+<p>Renovales, bewildered at the unexpectedness of this scene, at the
+submission of that woman who had always repelled him and now suddenly
+clung to him, unable to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> stand unless her arms were clasped about his
+neck, tried to free himself from her arms.</p>
+
+<p>After the first surprise, the old coldness came over him. He was
+irritated at this proud despair that was another's work.</p>
+
+<p>The woman he had longed for, the woman of his dreams came to him, seemed
+to give herself to him with hysteric sobs, eager to overwhelm him,
+perhaps without realizing what she was doing in the thoughtlessness of
+her abnormal state; but he pushed her back, with sudden terror,
+hesitating and timid in the face of the deed, pained that the
+realization of his dreams came, not voluntarily but under the influence
+of disappointment and desertion.</p>
+
+<p>Concha pressed close to him, eager to feel the protection of his
+powerful body.</p>
+
+<p>"Master! My friend! You won't leave me! You are so good!"</p>
+
+<p>And closing her eyes that no longer wept, she kissed his strong neck,
+and looked up with her eyes still moist, seeking his face in the shadow.
+They could hardly see each other; the room was dim with mysterious
+twilight,&mdash;all its objects indistinct as in a dream, the dangerous hour
+that had attracted them for the first time in the seclusion of the
+studio.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she drew away in terror, fleeing from him, taking refuge in the
+gloom, pursued by his eager hands.</p>
+
+<p>"No, not that. We'll be sorry for it! Friends! Nothing more than friends
+and always!"</p>
+
+<p>Her voice, as she said this, was sincere, but weak, faint, the voice of
+a victim who resists and has not the strength to defend himself.</p>
+
+<p>When the painter awakened it was night. The light from the street lamps
+shone through the window with a distant, reddish glow.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He shivered with a sensation of cold, as if he were emerging from under
+an enticing wave where he had lain, he could not remember how long. He
+felt weak, humiliated, with the anxiety of a child who has done
+something wrong.</p>
+
+<p>Concha was sobbing. What folly! It had been against her will; she knew
+they would be sorry for it. But she was the first to recover her
+calmness. Her outline rose on the bright background of the window. She
+called the painter who stood in the shadow, ashamed.</p>
+
+<p>"After all, there was no escape," she said firmly. "It was a dangerous
+game and it could not end in any other way. Now I know that I cared for
+you; that you are the only man for whom I can care."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales was beside her. Their two forms made a single outline on the
+bright background of the window, in a supreme embrace as though they
+desired to take refuge in each other.</p>
+
+<p>Her hands gently parted the heavy locks that hid the master's forehead.
+She gazed at him rapturously. Then she kissed his lips with an endless
+caress, whispering:</p>
+
+<p>"Mariano, dear. I love you, I worship you. I will be your slave. Don't
+ever leave me. I will seek you on my knees. You don't know how I will
+care for you. You shall not escape me. You wanted it,&mdash;you ugly darling,
+you big giant, my love."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="Va" id="Va"></a>V</h2>
+
+
+<p>One afternoon at the end of October, Renovales noticed that his friend
+Cotoner was rather worried.</p>
+
+<p>The master was jesting with him, making him tell about his labors as
+restorer of paintings in the old church. He had come back fatter and
+merrier, with a greasy, priestly luster. According to Renovales he had
+brought back all the health of the clerics. The bishop's table with its
+succulent abundance was a sweet memory for Cotoner. He extolled it and
+described it, praising those good gentlemen who, like himself, lived
+free from passion with no other voluptuousness in life than a refined
+appetite. The master laughed at the thought of the simplicity of those
+priests who in the afternoon, after the choir, formed a group around
+Cotoner's scaffold, following the movements of his hands with wondering
+eyes; at the respect of the attendants and other servants of the
+episcopal palace, hanging on Don Jos&eacute;'s words, astonished to find such
+modesty in an artist who was a friend of cardinals and had studied in
+Rome.</p>
+
+<p>When the master saw him so serious and silent that afternoon after
+luncheon he wanted to know what was worrying him. Had they complained of
+his restoration? Was his money gone? Cotoner shook his head. It was not
+his affairs; he was worrying over Josephina's condition. Had he not
+noticed her?</p>
+
+<p>Renovales shrugged his shoulders. It was the usual trouble:
+neurasthenia, diabetes, all those chronic ailments of which she did not
+want to be cured, refusing to obey the physicians. She was thinner, but
+her nerves seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> calmer; she cried less; she maintained a sad silence,
+simply wanting to be alone and stay in a corner, staring into space.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner shook his head again. Renovales' optimism was not to be wondered
+at.</p>
+
+<p>"You are leading a strange life, Mariano. Since I came back from my
+trip, you are a different man; I wouldn't know you. Once, you could not
+live without painting and now you spend weeks at a time without taking
+up a brush. You smoke, sing, walk up and down the studio and all at once
+rush off, out of the house and go&mdash;well. I know where, and perhaps your
+wife suspects it. You seem to be having a good time, master. The deuce
+take the rest! But, man alive, come down from the clouds. See what is
+around you; have some charity."</p>
+
+<p>And good Cotoner complained bitterly of the life the master was
+leading&mdash;disturbed by sudden impatience and hasty departures, from which
+he returned absent-minded, with a faint smile on his lips and a vague
+look in his eyes, as if he still relished the feast of memories he
+carried in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>The old painter seemed alarmed at Josephina's increasing delicacy, acute
+consumption that still found matter to destroy in her organism wasted by
+years of illness. The poor little woman coughed constantly and this
+cough, that was not dry but prolonged and violent, alarmed Cotoner.</p>
+
+<p>"The doctors ought to see her again."</p>
+
+<p>"The doctors!" exclaimed Renovales, "What's the use? A whole medical
+faculty has been here and to no avail. She doesn't mind them; she
+refuses everything, perhaps to annoy me, to oppose me. There's no
+danger; you don't know her. Weak and small as she is, she will outlive
+you and me."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His voice shook with wrath, as if he could not stand the atmosphere of
+that house where the only distractions he found were the pleasant
+memories that took him away from it.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner's insistence finally forced him to call a doctor who was a
+friend of his.</p>
+
+<p>Josephina was provoked, divining the cause of their anxiety. She felt
+strong. It was nothing but a cold; the coming of winter. And in her
+glances at the artist there was reproach and insult for his attention
+which she regarded as hypocrisy.</p>
+
+<p>When the doctor and the painter returned to the studio after the
+examination of the patient and stood face to face, the former hesitated
+as if he was afraid to formulate his ideas. He could not say anything
+with certainty; it was easy to make a mistake in regard to that weak
+system that maintained itself only by its extraordinary reserve power.
+Then he had recourse to the usual evasive measure of his profession. He
+advised him to take her away from Madrid, a change of air,&mdash;a change of
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales objected. Where could she go, now that winter was beginning,
+when at the height of summer she had wanted to come home? The doctor
+shrugged his shoulders and wrote out a prescription, revealing in his
+expression the desire to write something, not to go away without leaving
+a piece of paper as a trace. He explained various symptoms to the
+husband in order that he might observe them in the patient and he went
+away shrugging his shoulders again with a gesture that revealed
+indecision and dejection.</p>
+
+<p>Pshaw! Who knows? Perhaps! The system sometimes has unexpected
+reactions, wonderful reserve power to resist disease.</p>
+
+<p>This enigmatic consolation alarmed Renovales. He spied on his wife,
+studying her cough, watching her<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> closely when she did not see him. They
+no longer spent the night together. Since Milita's marriage, the father
+occupied her room. They had broken the slavery of the common bed that
+tormented their rest. Renovales made up for this departure by going into
+Josephina's chamber every morning.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you have a good night? Do you want something?"</p>
+
+<p>His wife's eyes greeted him with hostility.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing."</p>
+
+<p>And she accompanied this brief statement by turning over in the bed,
+disdainfully, with her back to the master.</p>
+
+<p>The painter received these evidences of hostility with quiet
+resignation. It was his duty; perhaps she might die! But this
+possibility of death did not stir him; it left him cold and he was angry
+at himself, as if two distinct personalities existed within him. He
+reproached himself for his cruelty, his icy indifference before the
+invalid who now produced in him only a passing remorse.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon at the Alberca woman's house, after one of their daring
+meetings with which they defied the holy calm of the noble, who had now
+returned from his trip, the painter spoke timidly of his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have to come less; don't be surprised. Josephina is very ill."</p>
+
+<p>"Very?" asked Concha.</p>
+
+<p>And in the flash of her glance, Renovales thought he saw something
+familiar, a blue gleam that had danced before him in the darkness of the
+night with infernal glow, troubling his conscience.</p>
+
+<p>"No, maybe it isn't anything. I don't believe there is any danger."</p>
+
+<p>He felt forced to lie. It consoled him to discount her illness. He felt
+that, by this voluntary deceit, he was relieving himself of the anxiety
+that goaded him. It was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span> the lie of the man who justifies himself by
+pretending not to know the depth of the harm he has caused.</p>
+
+<p>"It isn't anything," he said to his daughter, who, greatly alarmed at
+her mother's appearance, came to spend every night with her. "Just a
+cold. It will disappear as soon as good weather comes."</p>
+
+<p>He had a fire in every fireplace in the house; the rooms were as hot as
+a furnace. He declared loudly, without any show of excitement, that his
+wife was merely suffering from a slight cold, and as he spoke with such
+assurance, a strange voice seemed to cry within him: "You lie, she is
+dying; she is dying and you know it."</p>
+
+<p>The symptoms of which the doctor had spoken began to appear with ominous
+regularity in fatal succession. At first he noticed only a constant high
+fever that seemed to grow worse with severe chills at the end of the
+afternoon. Then he observed sweats that were terrifying in their
+frequency&mdash;sweats at night that left the print of her body on the
+sheets. And that poor body, which grew more fragile, more like a
+skeleton, as if the fire of the fever were devouring the last particle
+of fat and muscle, was left without any other covering and protection
+than the skin, and that too seemed to be melting away. She coughed
+frequently; at all hours of the day and night her painful hacking
+disturbed the silence of the house. She complained of a continual pain
+in the lower part of her chest. Her daughter made her eat by dint of
+coaxing, lifting the spoon to her mouth, as if she were a child. But
+coughing and nausea made nutrition impossible. Her tongue was dry; she
+complained of an infernal thirst that was devouring her.</p>
+
+<p>Thus passed a month. Renovales, in his optimistic mood, strove to
+believe that her illness would not last long.</p>
+
+<p>"She is not dying, Pepe," he would say in a convinced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> tone, as if he
+were disposed to quarrel with anyone who opposed this statement. "She is
+not dying, doctor. You don't think she is, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>The doctor would answer with his everlasting shrug. "Perhaps,&mdash;it's
+possible." And as the patient refused to submit to an internal
+examination, he was forced to inquire of the daughter and husband about
+the symptoms.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of her extreme emaciation, some parts of her body seemed to be
+undergoing an abnormal swelling. Renovales questioned the doctor
+frankly. What did he think of these symptoms? And the doctor bowed his
+head. He did not know. They must wait: Nature has surprises. But
+afterward, with sudden decision, he pretended that he wanted to write a
+prescription, in order that he might talk with the husband alone in his
+working studio.</p>
+
+<p>"To tell you the truth, Renovales, this pitiful comedy is getting
+tiresome. It may be all right for the others but you are a man. It is
+acute consumption; perhaps a matter of days, perhaps a matter of a few
+months; but she is dying and I know no remedy. If you want to, get some
+one else."</p>
+
+<p>"She is dying!" Renovales was dazed with surprise as if the possibility
+of this outcome had never occurred to him. "She is dying!" And when the
+doctor had gone away, with a firmer step than usual, as if he had freed
+himself of a weight, the painter repeated the words to himself, without
+their producing any other effect than leaving him abstracted in
+senseless stupidity. She is dying! But was it really possible that that
+little woman could die, who had so weighed on his life and whose
+weakness filled him with fear?</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he found himself walking up and down the studio, repeating
+aloud,</p>
+
+<p>"She is dying! She is dying!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He said it to himself in order that he might make himself feel sorry,
+and break out into sobs of grief, but he remained mute.</p>
+
+<p>Josephina was going to die&mdash;and he was calm. He wanted to weep; it
+seemed to him a duty. He blinked, swelling out his chest, holding his
+breath, trying to take in the whole meaning of his sorrow; but his eyes
+remained dry; his lungs breathed the air with pleasure; his thoughts,
+hard and refractory, did not shudder with any painful image. It was an
+exterior grief that found expression only in words, gestures and excited
+walking, his interior continued its old stolidness, as if the certainty
+of that death had congealed it in peaceful indifference.</p>
+
+<p>The shame of his villainy tormented him. The same instinct that forces
+ascetics to submit themselves to mortal punishments for their imaginary
+sins dragged him with the power of remorse to the sick chamber. He would
+not leave the room; he would face her scornful silence; he would stay
+with her till the end, forgetting sleep and hunger. He felt that he must
+purify himself by some noble, generous sacrifice from this blindness of
+soul that now was terrifying.</p>
+
+<p>Milita no longer spent the nights caring for her mother and would go
+home, somewhat to the discomfiture of her husband, who had been rather
+pleased at this unexpected return to a bachelor's life.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales did not sleep. After midnight when Cotoner went away he walked
+in silence through the brilliantly lighted rooms; he prowled around the
+chamber&mdash;entered it to see Josephina in bed, sweating, shaken from time
+to time by a fit of coughing or in a deathlike lethargy, so thin and
+small that the bed-clothes hardly showed the childlike outline of her
+body. Then the master<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> passed the rest of the night in an armchair,
+smoking, his eyes staring but his brain drowsy with sleep.</p>
+
+<p>His thoughts were far away. There was no use in feeling ashamed of his
+cruelty; he seemed bewitched by a mysterious power that was superior to
+his remorse. He forgot the sick woman; he wondered what Concha was doing
+at that time; he saw her in fancy; he remembered her words, her
+caresses; he thought of their nights of abandon. And when, with a
+violent effort, he threw off these dreams, in expiation he would go to
+the door of the sick chamber and listen to her labored breathing,
+putting on a gloomy face, but unable to weep or feel the sadness he
+longed to feel.</p>
+
+<p>After two months of illness, Josephina could no longer stay in bed. Her
+daughter would lift her out of it without any effort as if she were a
+feather, and she would sit in a chair,&mdash;small, insignificant,
+unrecognizable, her face so emaciated that its only features seemed to
+be the deep hollows of her eyes and her nose, sharp as the edge of a
+knife.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner could hardly keep back the tears when he saw her.</p>
+
+<p>"There isn't anything left of her!" he would say as he went away. "No
+one would know her!"</p>
+
+<p>Her harrowing cough scattered a deathly poison about her. White foam
+came to her lips where it seemed to harden in the corners. Her eyes grew
+larger, they took on a strange glow as if they saw through persons and
+things. Oh, those eyes! What a shudder of terror they awakened in
+Renovales!</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon they fell on him, with the intense, searching glance that
+had always terrified him. They were eyes that pierced his forehead, that
+laid bare his thoughts.</p>
+
+<p>They were alone; Milita had gone home; Cotoner was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> sleeping in a chair
+in the studio. The sick woman seemed more animated, eager to talk,
+looking on her husband with a sort of pity as he sat beside her, almost
+at her feet.</p>
+
+<p>She was going to die; she was certain of death. And a last revolt of
+life that recoils from the end, the horror of the unknown, made the
+tears rise to her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales protested violently, trying to conceal his deceit by his
+shouts. Die? She must not think of that! She would live; she still had
+before her many years of happy existence.</p>
+
+<p>She smiled as if she pitied him. She could not be deceived; her eyes
+penetrated farther than his; she divined the impalpable, the invisible
+that hovered about her. She spoke weakly but with that inexplicable
+solemnity that is characteristic of a voice that emits its last sounds,
+of a soul that unbosoms itself for the last time.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall die, Mariano, sooner than you think, later than I desire. I
+shall die and you will be free."</p>
+
+<p>He! He desire her death! His surprise and remorse made him jump to his
+feet, wave his arms in angry protest, writhe, as if a pair of invisible
+hands had just laid him bare with a rude wrench.</p>
+
+<p>"Josephina, don't rave. Calm yourself. For God's sake don't talk such
+nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>She smiled with a painful, horrible expression, but immediately her poor
+face became beautiful with the serenity of one who is departing this
+life without hallucinations or delirium, in perfect mental poise. She
+spoke to him with the immense sympathy, the superhuman compassion of one
+who contemplates the wretched stream of life, departing from its
+current, already touching with her feet the shores of eternal shadow, of
+eternal peace.</p>
+
+<p>"I should not want to go away without telling you. I die knowing
+everything. Do not move; do not protest.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> You know the power I have over
+you. More than once I have seen you watching me in terror, so easily do
+I read your thoughts. For years I have been convinced that all was over
+between us. We have lived like good creatures of God&mdash;eating together,
+sleeping together, helping each other in our needs. But I peered within
+you; I looked at your heart. Nothing! Not a memory, not a spark of love.
+I have been your woman, the good companion who cares for the house, and
+relieves a man of the petty cares of life. You have worked hard to
+surround me with comforts, in order that I might be contented and not
+disturb you. But Love? Never. Many people live as we have&mdash;many of them;
+almost all. I could not; I thought that life was something different and
+I am not sorry to go away. Don't go into a rage; don't shout. You aren't
+to blame, poor Mariano&mdash;It was a mistake for us to marry."</p>
+
+<p>She excused him gently with a kindness that seemed not of this world,
+generously passing over the cruelty and selfishness of a life she was
+about to leave. Men like him were exceptional; they ought to live alone,
+by themselves, like those great trees that absorb all the life from the
+ground and do not allow a single plant to grow in the space which their
+roots reach. She was not strong enough to stand isolation; in order to
+live she must have the shadow of tenderness, the certainty of being
+loved. She ought to have married a man like other men; a simple being
+like herself, whose only longings were modest and commonplace. The
+painter had dragged her into his extraordinary path out of the easy,
+well-beaten roads that the rest follow and she was falling by the
+wayside, old in the prime of her youth, broken because she had gone with
+him in this journey which was beyond her strength.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales was walking about with ceaseless protests.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Why, what nonsense you are talking! You are raving! I have always loved
+you, Josephina. I love you now."</p>
+
+<p>Her eyes suddenly became hard. A flash of anger crossed their pupils.</p>
+
+<p>"Stop; don't lie. I know of a pile of letters that you have in your
+studio, hidden behind the books in your library. I have read them one by
+one. I have been following them as they came; I discovered your hiding
+place when you had only three of them. You know that I see through you;
+that I have a power over you, that you can hide nothing from me. I know
+your love affairs."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales felt his ears buzzing, the floor slipping from under his feet.
+What astounding witchcraft! Even the letters so carefully hidden had
+been discovered by that woman's divining instinct!</p>
+
+<p>"It's a lie!" he cried vehemently to conceal his agitation. "It isn't
+love! If you have read them, you know what it is as well as I; just
+friendship; the letters of a friend who is somewhat crazy."</p>
+
+<p>The sick woman smiled sadly. At first it was friendship&mdash;even less than
+that, the perverse amusement of a flighty woman who liked to play with a
+celebrated man, exciting in him the enthusiasm of youth. She knew her
+childhood companion; she was sure it would not go any farther; and so
+she pitied the poor man in the midst of his mad love. But afterward
+something extraordinary had certainly happened; something that she could
+not explain and which had upset all of her calculations. Now her husband
+and Concha were lovers.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not deny it; it is useless. It is this certainty that is killing me.
+I realized it when I saw you distracted, with a happy smile as if you
+were relishing your thoughts. I realized it in the merry songs you sang
+when you awoke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> in the morning, in the perfume with which you were
+impregnated and which followed you everywhere. I did not need to find
+any more letters. The odor around you, that perfume of infidelity, of
+sin, which always accompanied you, was enough. You, poor man, came home
+thinking that everything was left outside the door, and that odor
+follows you, denounces you; I think I can still perceive it."</p>
+
+<p>And her nostrils dilated, as she breathed with a pained expression,
+closing her eyes as though she wished to escape the images which that
+perfume called up in her. Her husband persisted in his denials, now that
+he was convinced that she had no other proof of his infidelity. A lie!
+An hallucination!</p>
+
+<p>"No, Mariano," murmured the sick woman. "She is within you; she fills
+your head; from here I can see her. Once a thousand mad fancies occupied
+her place,&mdash;illusions of your taste, naked women, a wantonness that was
+your religion. Now it is she who fills it. It is your desire incarnated.
+Go on and be happy. I am going away&mdash;there is no place for me in the
+world."</p>
+
+<p>She was silent for a moment and the tears came to her eyes again at the
+memory of the first years of their life together.</p>
+
+<p>"No one has cared for you as I have, Mariano," she said with tender
+regret. "I look on you now as a stranger, without affection and without
+hate. And still, there was never a woman who loved her husband so
+passionately."</p>
+
+<p>"I worship you. Josephina, I love you just as I did when we first met
+each other. Do you remember?"</p>
+
+<p>But in spite of the emotion he pretended to show, his voice had a false
+ring.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't try to bluff, Mariano; it is useless; everything<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span> is over. You do
+not care for me nor have I either any of the old feeling."</p>
+
+<p>In her face there was an expression of wonder, of surprise; she seemed
+terror-stricken at her own calmness that made her forgive thus
+indifferently the man who had caused her so much suffering. In her
+fancy, she saw a wide garden, flowers that seemed immortal and they were
+withering and falling with the advent of winter. Then her thoughts went
+beyond, over the chill of death. The snow was melting; the sun was
+shining once more; the new spring was coming with its court of love and
+the dry branches were growing green once more with another life.</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows!" murmured the sick woman with her eyes closed. "Perhaps,
+after I am dead, you will remember me. Perhaps you will care for me
+then, and be grateful to one who loved you so. We want a thing when it
+is lost."</p>
+
+<p>The invalid was silent, exhausted by such an effort; she relapsed into
+that lethargy which for her took the place of rest. Renovales, after
+this conversation, felt his vile inferiority beside his wife. She knew
+everything and forgave him. She had followed the course of his love,
+letter by letter, look by look, seeing in his smiles the memory of his
+faithlessness. And she was silent! She was dying without a protest! And
+he did not fall at her feet to beg her forgiveness! And he remained
+unmoved, without a tear, without a sigh!</p>
+
+<p>He was afraid to stay alone with her. Milita came back to stay at the
+house to care for her mother. The master took refuge in his studio; he
+wanted to forget in work the body that was dying under the same roof.</p>
+
+<p>But in vain he poured colors on his palette and took up brushes and
+prepared canvases. He did nothing but daub; he could make no progress,
+as if he had forgotten<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> his art. He kept turning his head anxiously,
+thinking that Josephina was going to enter suddenly, to continue that
+interview in which she had laid bare the greatness of her soul and the
+baseness of his own. He felt forced to return to her apartments, to go
+on tiptoe to the door of the chamber, in order to be sure that she was
+there.</p>
+
+<p>Her emaciation was frightful; it had no limits. When it seemed that it
+must stop, it still surprised them with new shrinking, as if after the
+disappearance of her flesh, her poor skeleton was melting away.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes she was tormented with delirium, and her daughter, holding
+back her tears, approved of the extravagant trips she planned, of her
+proposals to go far away to live with Milita in a garden, where they
+would find no men; where there were no painters&mdash;no painters.</p>
+
+<p>She lived about two weeks. Renovales, with cruel selfishness, was
+anxious to rest, complaining of this abnormal existence. If she must
+die, why did she not end it as soon as possible, and restore the whole
+house to tranquillity!</p>
+
+<p>The end came one afternoon when the master, lying on a couch in his
+studio, was re-reading the tender complaints of a scented little letter.
+So long since she had seen him! How was the patient getting on? She knew
+that his duty was there; people would talk if he came to see her. But
+this separation was hard!</p>
+
+<p>He did not have a chance to finish it. Milita came into the studio, in
+her eyes that expression of horror and fright, which the presence of
+death, the touch of his passage, always inspires, even if his arrival
+has been expected.</p>
+
+<p>Her voice came breathlessly, broken. Mamma was talking with her; she was
+amusing her with the hope of a trip in the near future,&mdash;and all at once
+a hoarse sound,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span>&mdash;her head bent forward before it fell onto her
+shoulder&mdash;a moment&mdash;nothing&mdash;just like a little bird.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales ran to the bedroom, bumping into his friend Cotoner who came
+out of the dining-room, running too. They saw her in an armchair,
+shrunken, wilted, in the deathly abandon that converts the body into a
+limp mass. All was over.</p>
+
+<p>Milita had to catch her father, to hold him up. She had to be the one
+who kept her calmness and energy at the critical moment. Renovales let
+his daughter lead him; he rested his face on her shoulder, with sublime,
+dramatic grief, with beautiful, artistic despair, still holding
+absent-mindedly in his hand the letter of the countess.</p>
+
+<p>"Courage, Mariano," said poor Cotoner, his voice choked with tears. "We
+must be men. Milita, take your father to the studio. Don't let him see
+her."</p>
+
+<p>The master let his daughter guide him, sighing deeply, trying in vain to
+weep. The tears would not come. He could not concentrate his attention;
+a voice within him was distracting him,&mdash;the voice of temptation.</p>
+
+<p>She was dead and he was free. He would go on his way, light-hearted,
+master of himself, relieved of troublesome hindrances. Before him lay
+life with all its joys, love without a fear or a scruple; glory with its
+sweet returns.</p>
+
+<p>Life was going to begin again.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+<h2><a name="PART_III" id="PART_III"></a>PART III</h2>
+
+<p><br /><br /></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="Ib" id="Ib"></a>I</h2>
+
+
+<p>Until the beginning of the following winter Renovales did not return to
+Madrid. The death of his wife had left him stunned, as if he doubted its
+reality, as if he felt strange at finding himself alone and master of
+his actions. Cotoner, seeing that he had no ambition for work and would
+lie on the couch in the studio with a blank expression on his face, as
+if he were in a waking dream, interpreted his condition as a deep,
+silent grief. Besides, it irritated him that as soon as Josephina was
+dead, the countess began to come to the house frequently to see the
+master and her dear Milita.</p>
+
+<p>"You ought to go away,"&mdash;the old artist advised. "You are free; you will
+be just as well off anywhere as here. What you need is a long journey;
+that will take your mind off your trouble."</p>
+
+<p>And Renovales started on his journey with the eagerness of a school-boy,
+free for the first time from the vigilance of a family. Alone, rich,
+master of his actions, he believed that he was the happiest being on
+earth. His daughter had her husband, a family of her own; he saw himself
+in welcome seclusion, without cares or duties, without any other ties
+than the constant letters of Concha, which met him on his travels. Oh,
+happy freedom!</p>
+
+<p>He lived in Holland, studying its museums, which he had never seen:
+then, with the caprice of a wandering<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> bird, he went down to Italy where
+he enjoyed several months of easy life, without any work, visiting
+studios, receiving the honors due a famous master, in the same places
+where once he had struggled, poor and unknown. Then he moved to Paris,
+finally attracted by the countess, who was spending the summer at
+Biarritz with her husband.</p>
+
+<p>Concha's epistolary style grew more urgent. She had numerous objections
+to a prolongation of the period of their separation. He must come back;
+he had traveled enough. She could not stand it without seeing him; she
+loved him; she could not live without him. Besides, as a last resource,
+she spoke to him of her husband, the count, who, in his eternal
+blindness, joined in his wife's requests asking her to invite the artist
+to spend a while at their house in Biarritz. The poor painter must be
+very sad in his bereavement and the kindly nobleman insisted on
+consoling him in his loneliness. In his house, they would divert him;
+they would be a new family for him.</p>
+
+<p>The painter lived for a great part of the summer and all the autumn in
+the welcome atmosphere of that home which seemed created for him. The
+servants respected him, seeing in him the true master. The countess,
+delirious after his long absence, was so reckless that the artist had to
+restrain her, urging her to be prudent. The noble Count of Alberca was
+unceasing in his sympathy. Poor friend! Deprived of his companion! And
+by his expression he shared the horror he felt at the possibility of
+being left a widower, without that wife who made him so happy.</p>
+
+<p>At the beginning of winter Renovales returned to his house. He did not
+experience the slightest emotion on entering the three great studios, on
+passing through those rooms, which seemed more icy, larger, more hollow,
+now that they were stirred by no other steps than his own.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> He could not
+believe that a year had passed. All was the same as if he had been
+absent for only a few days. Cotoner had taken good care of the house,
+setting to work the concierge and his wife and the old servant who had
+charge of cleaning the studios,&mdash;the only servants that Renovales had
+kept. There was no dust, none of the close atmosphere of a house that
+has long been closed. Everything appeared bright and clean, as if life
+had not been interrupted in that house. The sun and air had been pouring
+in the windows, driving out that atmosphere of sickness which Renovales
+had left when he went away and in which he fancied he could feel the
+trace of the invisible garb of death.</p>
+
+<p>It was a new house, like the one he had known before in form, but as
+fresh as a recently constructed building.</p>
+
+<p>Outside of his studio nothing reminded him of his dead wife. He avoided
+going into her chamber; he did not even ask who had the key. He slept in
+the room that had formerly been his daughter's in a small, iron bed,
+delighted to lead a modest, sober life in that princely mansion.</p>
+
+<p>He took breakfast in the dining room at one end of the table, on a
+napkin, oppressed by the size and luxury of the room which now seemed
+vast and useless. He looked at the chair beside the fireplace, where the
+dead woman had often sat. That chair with its open arms seemed to be
+waiting for her trembling, bird-like little body. But the painter did
+not feel any emotion. He could not even remember Josephina's face
+exactly. She had changed so much! The last, that skeleton-like mask, was
+the one he recalled the best, but he thrust it aside, with the
+selfishness of a strong, happy man, who does not want to sadden his life
+with unpleasant memories.</p>
+
+<p>He did not see her picture anywhere in the house. She seemed to have
+evaporated forever without leaving the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> least trace of her body on the
+walls that had so often supported her tottering steps, on the stairways
+that hardly felt the weight of her feet. Nothing; she was quite
+forgotten. Within Renovales, the only trace of the long years of their
+union that remained was an unpleasant feeling, an annoying memory that
+made him relish all the more his new existence.</p>
+
+<p>His first days in the solitude of the house brought new, intense joys.
+After luncheon he would lie down on the couch in the studio, watching
+the blue spirals of cigar smoke. Complete liberty! Alone in the world!
+Life wholly to himself, without any care or fear. He could go and come
+without a pair of eyes spying on his actions, without being reproached
+with bitter words. That little door of the studio, which he used to
+watch in terror, no longer opened, to let in his enemy. He could close
+it, shutting out the world; he could open it and summon in a noisy,
+scandalous stream, all that he fancied&mdash;hosts of naked beauties, to
+paint in a wild bacchanalian rout, strange, black-eyed Oriental girls to
+dance in morbid abandon on the rugs of the studio, all the disordered
+illusions of his desire&mdash;the monstrous feasts of fancy which he had
+dreamed of in his days of servitude. He was not sure where he could find
+all this, he was not very eager to look for it. But the consciousness
+that he could realize it without any obstacle was enough.</p>
+
+<p>This consciousness of his absolute freedom, instead of urging him into
+action, kept him in a state of calm, satisfied that he could do
+everything, without the least desire to try anything. Formerly he used
+to rage, complaining of his fetters. What things he would do if he were
+free! What scandals he would cause with his daring! Oh, if he only were
+not married to a slave of convention who tried to apply rules to his art
+with the same<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> formality which she had for her calls and her household
+expenses!</p>
+
+<p>And now that the slave of convention was gone, the artist remained in
+sleepy comfort, looking like a timid lover, at the canvases he had begun
+a year before, at his neglected palette, saying with false energy, "This
+is the last day. To-morrow I will begin."</p>
+
+<p>And the next day, noon came, and with it luncheon, before Renovales had
+taken up a brush. He read foreign papers, magazines on art, looking up,
+with professional interest, what the famous painters of Europe were
+exhibiting or working on. He received a call from some of his humble
+companions, and in their presence he lamented the insolence of the
+younger generation, their disrespectful attacks, with the surliness of a
+famous artist who is getting old and thinks that talent has died out
+with him and that no one can take his place. Then the drowsiness of
+digestion seized him, as it did Cotoner, and he submitted to the bliss
+of short naps, the happiness of doing nothing. His daughter&mdash;all the
+family he had&mdash;would receive more than she expected at his death. He had
+worked enough. Painting, like all the arts, was a pretty deceit, for the
+advancement of which men strove as if they were mad, until they hated it
+like death. What folly! It was better to keep calm, enjoying your own
+life, intoxicated with the simple animal joys, living for life's sake.
+What good were a few more pictures in those huge palaces filled with
+canvases, disfigured by the centuries, in which hardly a single stroke
+was left as the author had made it? What good did it do the human race,
+which changes its dwelling place every dozen centuries and has seen the
+proud works of man, built of marble or granite, fall in ruins,&mdash;if a
+certain Renovales produced a few beautiful toys of cloth and colors,
+which a cigar stub could destroy, or a puff of wind, a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> drop of water
+leaking through the wall, might ruin in a few years?</p>
+
+<p>But this pessimistic attitude disappeared when some one called him
+"Illustrious Master," or when he saw his name in a paper, and a pupil or
+admirer manifested an interest in his work.</p>
+
+<p>At present he was resting. He had not yet recovered from the shock. Poor
+Josephina! But he was going to work a great deal; he felt a new strength
+for works greater than any that he had thus far produced. And after
+these exclamations, he would be seized with a mad desire for work and
+would enumerate the pictures he had in mind, dwelling upon their
+originality. They were bold problems in color, new technical methods
+that had occurred to him. But these plans never passed the limits of
+speech, they never reached the brush. The springs of his will, once
+vibrant and vigorous, seemed broken or rusted. He did not suffer, he did
+not desire. Death had taken away his fever for work, his artistic
+restlessness, leaving him in the limbo of comfort and tranquillity.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon, when he succeeded in throwing off his comfortable
+torpor, he went to see his daughter, if she was in Madrid, for she very
+frequently went with her husband on his automobile trips. Then he ended
+the afternoon at the Albercas', where he often stayed till midnight.</p>
+
+<p>He dined there almost every day. The count, accustomed to his society,
+seemed as eager to see him as his wife. He spoke enthusiastically of the
+portrait which Renovales was painting of him to go with Concha's. He
+would make more progress when he secured some insignia of foreign orders
+that were still lacking in his catalogue of honors. And the artist felt
+a twinge of remorse as he listened to the good gentleman's simplicity,
+while his wife, with mad recklessness, caressed him with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> her eyes,
+leaned toward him as if she were on the point of falling into his arms.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as soon as the husband went away, she would throw her arms about
+him, hungry for him, defying the curiosity of the servants. Love that
+was threatened with dangers seemed sweeter to her. And the artist took
+pride in letting her worship him. He, who at first was the one who
+implored and pursued, assumed now an air of passive superiority,
+accepting Concha's homage.</p>
+
+<p>Lacking enthusiasm for work, in order to keep up his reputation
+Renovales took refuge in the official honors which are granted to
+respected masters. He put off till the next day the new work, the great
+work that was to call forth new cries of admiration over his name. He
+would paint his famous picture of Phryne on a beach, when summer came,
+and he could retire to the solitary shore, taking with him the perfect
+beauty to serve as his model. Perhaps he could persuade the countess.
+Who knows! She smiled with satisfaction every time she heard from his
+lips the praise of her beauty. But meanwhile the master demanded that
+people should remember his name for his earlier works, that they should
+admire him for what he had already produced.</p>
+
+<p>He was irritated at the papers, which extolled the younger generation,
+remembered him only to mention him in passing, like a consecrated glory,
+like a man who was dead and had his pictures in the Museo del Prado. He
+was gnawed with dumb anger, like an actor who is tortured with envy,
+seeing the stage occupied by others.</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to work; he was going to work immediately. But as time passed,
+he felt an increasing laziness, which incapacitated him for work, a
+numbness in his hands, which he concealed even from his most intimate
+friends, ashamed when he recalled his lightness of touch in the old
+days.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"This will not last," he said to himself with the confidence of a man
+who does not doubt his ability.</p>
+
+<p>In one of his fanciful moods, he compared himself with a dog, restless,
+fierce and aggressive when he is tormented with hunger, but gentle and
+peaceable when he is surrounded with comforts. He needed his periods of
+greed and restlessness, when he desired everything, when he could not
+find peace for his work, and in the midst of his marital troubles
+attacked the canvas as if it were an enemy, hurling colors on it
+furiously, in slaps of light. Even after he was rich and famous, he had
+had something to long for. "If I only were free! If I were master of my
+time! If I lived alone, without a family, without cares; as a true
+artist should live!" And now his wishes were fulfilled, he had nothing
+to hope for, but he was a victim of laziness that amounted to
+exhaustion, absolutely without desire, as if only wrath and restlessness
+were for him the internal goad of inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>The longing for fame tormented him; as the days went by and his name was
+not mentioned, he believed that he had come to an obscure death. He
+fancied that the youths turned their backs on him, to look in the
+opposite direction, storing him away among the respected dead, admiring
+other masters. His artistic pride made him seek opportunities for
+notoriety, with the guilelessness of a tyro. He, who scoffed so at the
+official honors and the "sheepfold" of the academies, suddenly
+remembered that several years before, after one of his successes, they
+had elected him a member of the Academy of Fine Arts.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner was astonished to see the importance he began to attach to this
+unsolicited distinction, at which he had always laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"That was a boy's joking," said the master gravely.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> "Life cannot always
+be taken as a laughing matter. We must be serious, Pepe; we are getting
+on in years, and we must not always make fun of things that are
+essentially respectable."</p>
+
+<p>Besides, he charged himself with rudeness. Those worthy personages, whom
+he had often compared with all kinds of animals, no doubt thought it
+strange that the years went by without his caring to occupy his seat. He
+must go to the academic reception. And Cotoner, at his bidding, attended
+to all the details, from taking the news to those worthies, in order
+that they might set the date for the function, to arranging the speech
+of the new Academician. For Renovales learned with some misgiving that
+he must read a speech. He, accustomed to handling the brush and poorly
+trained in his childhood, took up the pen with timidity, and even in his
+letters to the Alberca woman preferred to represent his passionate
+phrases with amusing pictures, to embodying them in words.</p>
+
+<p>The old Bohemian got him out of this difficulty. He knew his Madrid
+well. The secrets of the world which are detailed in the newspapers had
+no mysteries for him. Renovales should have as magnificent a speech as
+any one.</p>
+
+<p>And one afternoon he brought to the studio a certain Isidro Maltrana,<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a>
+a diminutive, ugly young fellow with a huge head, and an air of
+self-satisfaction and boldness that disgusted Renovales from the very
+first. He was well dressed but the lapels of his coat were dirty with
+ashes, and its collar was strewn with dandruff. The painter observed
+that he smelt of wine. At first he pompously styled him master, but
+after a few words he called him by name with disconcerting familiarity.
+He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> moved about the studio as if it were his own, as if he had spent his
+whole life in it, indifferent to its beautiful decorations.</p>
+
+<p>It would not be any trouble for him to undertake the preparation of a
+speech. That was his specialty. Academic receptions and works for
+members of Congress were his best field. He understood that the master
+needed him&mdash;a painter!</p>
+
+<p>And Renovales, who was beginning to find this Maltrana fellow attractive
+in spite of his insolence, drew himself up to his full height in the
+majesty of his fame. If it was a question of doing a picture for
+admission, he was the man. But a speech!</p>
+
+<p>"Agreed: you shall have the speech," said Maltrana. "It's an easy
+matter, I know the recipe. We shall speak of the holy traditions of the
+past, we shall despise certain daring innovations on the part of the
+inexperienced youth, which were perfectly proper twenty years ago, when
+you were beginning, but which now are out of place. Do you care for a
+thrust at modernism?"</p>
+
+<p>Renovales smiled, enchanted at the frankness with which this young
+fellow spoke of his task, and he moved one hand to suggest a balance.
+"Man alive! Like this. A just mean is what we want."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, Renovales; flatter the old men and not quarrel with the
+young. You are a real master. You will be pleased with my work."</p>
+
+<p>With the calmness of a shopkeeper, before the artist had a chance to
+speak of the charge, he broached the matter. It would be two thousand
+<i>reales</i>; he had already told Cotoner. The low tariff; the one he set
+for people he liked.</p>
+
+<p>"A man must live, Renovales. I have a son."</p>
+
+<p>And his voice grew serious as he said this; his face,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> ugly and cynical,
+became noble for a moment, reflecting the cares of paternal love.</p>
+
+<p>"A son, dear master, for whom I do anything that turns up. If it is
+necessary I will steal. He is the only thing I have in the world. His
+mother died in misery in the hospital. I dreamt of being something, but
+you can't think of nonsense when you have a baby. Between the hope of
+being famous and the certainty of eating&mdash;eating is the first."</p>
+
+<p>But his tenderness was not of long duration. He recovered the cold,
+mercenary expression of a man who goes through life in an armor of
+cynicism, disillusioned by misfortune, setting a price on all his acts.
+They agreed on the sum; he should receive it when he handed over the
+speech.</p>
+
+<p>"And if you print it, as I hope," he said as he went away, "I will read
+the proof without any extra charge. Of course that is a special favor to
+you, because I am one of your admirers."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales spent several weeks in the preparations for his reception, as
+if it were the most important event in his life. The countess also took
+a great interest in the matter. She would see to it that it was a
+distinguished function, something like the receptions of the French
+Academy, described in the papers or in novels. All of her friends would
+be present. The great painter would read his speech, the cynosure of a
+hundred interested eyes, amid the fluttering of fans and the buzz of
+conversation. An immense success which would enrage many artists who
+were eager to get a foothold in high society.</p>
+
+<p>A few days before the function, Cotoner handed him a bundle of papers.
+It was a copy of the speech,&mdash;in a fair hand; it was already paid for.
+And Renovales, with the instinct of an actor anxious to make a good
+show,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> spent an afternoon, striding from studio to studio, with the
+manuscript in one hand and making energetic gestures with the other,
+while he read the paragraphs aloud. That impudent Maltrana was gifted!
+It was a work that filled the simple artist with enthusiasm, in his
+ignorance of everything except printing, a series of glorious trumpet
+blasts, in which were scattered names, many names; appreciations in
+tremulous rhetoric, historical summaries, so well rounded, so complete
+that it seemed as though mankind had been living since the beginning of
+the world with no other thought than Renovates' speech, and judging its
+acts in order that he might give them a definite interpretation.</p>
+
+<p>The artist felt a thrill of elevation as he repeated in eloquent
+succession Greek names, many of which were mere sounds to him, for he
+was not certain whether they were great sculptors or tragic poets.
+Again, he experienced a sensation of self-satisfaction when he
+encountered the names of Dante and Shakespeare. He knew that they had
+not painted, but they ought to appear in every speech which was worthy
+of respect. And when he came to the paragraphs on modern art, he seemed
+to touch terra firma, and smiled with a superior air. Maltrana did not
+know much about that subject; superficial appreciation of a layman; but
+he wrote well, very well; he could not have done better himself. And he
+studied his speech, till he could repeat whole paragraphs by heart,
+paying particular attention to the pronunciation of the difficult names,
+taking lessons from his most cultured friends.</p>
+
+<p>"It is for appearance's sake," he said na&iuml;vely. "It is because I don't
+want people to poke fun at me, even if I am only a painter."</p>
+
+<p>The day of the reception he had luncheon long before noon. He scarcely
+touched the food; this ceremony,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> which he had never seen, made him
+rather worried. To his anxiety was added the irritation he always felt
+when he had to attend to the care of his person.</p>
+
+<p>His long years of married life had accustomed him to neglect all the
+trivial, everyday needs of life. If he had to appear in different
+clothes than usual, the hands of his wife and daughter deftly arranged
+them for him. Even at the times of greatest ill-feeling, when he and
+Josephina hardly spoke to each other, he noticed around him the
+scrupulous order of that excellent housekeeper who removed all obstacles
+from his way, relieving him of the ordinary cares of life.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner was away; the servant had gone to the countess's to take her
+some invitations which she had asked for, at the last minute, for some
+friends. Renovales decided to dress alone. His son-in-law and daughter
+were going to come for him at two. L&oacute;pez de Sosa had insisted on taking
+him to the Academy in his car, seeking, no doubt, by this a little ray
+of the splendor of official glory that was to be showered on his
+father-in-law.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales dressed himself, after struggling with the many difficulties
+that arose from his lack of habit. He was as awkward as a child without
+his mother's help. When at last he looked at himself in the mirror, with
+his dress coat on and his cravat neatly tied, he heaved a sigh of
+relief. At last! Now the insignia&mdash;the ribbon. Where could he find those
+honorary trinkets? Since Milita's wedding he had not had them on, the
+poor departed had put them away. Where could he find them? And hastily,
+fearing the time would go by and his children would surprise him before
+he finished the decoration of his person, out of breath, swearing with
+impatience, wandering around in hopeless confusion, unable to remember
+anything definitely, he entered<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> the room his wife had used as a
+wardrobe. Perhaps she had put away his insignia there. He opened the
+doors of the great clothes-closets with a nervous pull. Clothes! Nothing
+but clothes.</p>
+
+<p>The odor of balsam, which made him think of the silent calm of the
+woods, was mingled with a subtle, mysterious perfume, a perfume of years
+gone by, of dead beauties, of forgotten memories, like the fragrance of
+dried flowers. This odor came from the mass of clothes that hung there,
+white, black, pink and blue dresses, with their colors dull and
+indistinct, the lace crumpled and yellow, retaining in their folds
+something of the living fragrance of the form they once had covered. The
+whole past of the dead woman was there. With superstitious care, she had
+stored away the gowns of the different periods of her life, as if she
+had been afraid to get rid of them, to tear out a part of her life.</p>
+
+<p>As the painter looked at some of these gowns, he felt the same emotion
+as if they were old friends who had suddenly appeared like an unexpected
+surprise. A pink skirt recalled the happy days in Rome; a blue suit
+brought to his memory the Piazza di san Marco, and he thought he heard
+the fluttering of the doves and the distant rumble of the noisy <i>Ride of
+the Valkyries</i>. The dark, cheap suits that belonged to the cruel days of
+struggle hung at the back of the closet, like the garb of suffering and
+sacrifice. A straw hat, bright as a summer wood, covered with red
+flowers and with cherries, seemed to smile to him from a shelf. Oh, he
+knew that too! Many a time its sharp edge of straw had stuck into his
+forehead, when at sunset on the roads of the Roman Compagna he used to
+bend down, with his arm around his little wife's waist, to kiss her lips
+that trembled softly, while from the distance in the blue mist came the
+tinkle of the bells of the flocks and the mournful songs of the
+drivers.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>That youthful perfume, grown old in its confinement, which poured from
+the closets in waves, with the rush of an old wine that escapes from the
+dusty bottle in spurts, spoke to him of the past, calling up the joys
+that were dead. His senses trembled, a subtle intoxication crept over
+him. He fancied he had fallen into a sea of perfume that buffeted him
+with its waves, playing with him as if he were an inert body. It was the
+scent of youth that came back to him; the incense of the happy days,
+fainter, more subtle with the regret of dead years. It was the perfume
+of her beauty which one night in Rome had made him sigh admiringly.</p>
+
+<p>"I worship you, Josephina. You are as fair as Goya's little <i>Maja</i>. You
+are the <i>Maja Desnuda</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Holding his breath like a swimmer, he delved into the depths of the
+closets, reaching out his hands greedily, yet eager to get out of there,
+to return, as soon as he could, to the surface, to the pure air. He came
+upon card-board boxes, bundles of belts and old lace, without finding
+what he was seeking. And every time that his trembling arms shook the
+old clothes, the swinging of the skirts seemed to throw in his face a
+wave of that dead, indefinable perfume which he breathed more with his
+fancy than with his senses.</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to get out as soon as possible. The insignia were not in the
+wardrobe. Perhaps he would find them in the chamber. And for the first
+time since the death of his wife, he ventured to turn the door key. The
+perfume of the past seemed to go with him; it had penetrated through all
+the pores of his body. He fancied he felt the pressure of a pair of
+distant, enormous arms, that came from the infinite. He was no longer
+afraid to enter the chamber.</p>
+
+<p>He groped his way, looking for one of the windows. When the shutters
+creaked and the sunlight rushed in,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span> the painter's eyes, after a moment
+of blinking, saw, like a sweet, faint smile, the glow of the Venetian
+furniture.</p>
+
+<p>What a beautiful artistic chamber! After a year of absence, the painter
+admired the great clothes-press with its three mirrors, deep and blue as
+only the mirror-makers of Murano could make them and the ebony of the
+furniture inlaid with tiny bits of pearl and bright jewels, a specimen
+of the artistic genius of ancient Venice in contact with Oriental
+peoples. This furniture had been for Renovales one of the great
+undertakings of his youth; the whim of a lover, eager to bestow princely
+honors on his companion after years of strict economy.</p>
+
+<p>They had always had their luxurious bedroom wherever they were, even at
+the time of their poverty. In those hard days when he painted in the
+attic and Josephina did the cooking, they had no chairs, they ate from
+the same plate; Milita played with rag-dolls; but in their miserable,
+whitewashed alcove were piled up with sacred respect all that furniture
+of the fair-haired wife of some Doge, like a hope for the future, a
+promise of better times. She, poor woman, with her simple faith, cleaned
+it, worshiped it, waiting for the hour of magic transformation to move
+them to a palace.</p>
+
+<p>The painter glanced about the chamber calmly. He found nothing unusual
+there, nothing that moved him. Cotoner had prudently hidden the chair in
+which Josephina died.</p>
+
+<p>The princely bed, with its monumental head and foot of carved ebony and
+brilliant mosaic, looked vulgar with the mattresses piled in a heap.
+Renovales laughed at the terror which had so often made him stop in
+front of the locked door. Death had left no trace. Nothing there
+reminded him of Josephina. In the atmosphere floated that smell of
+closeness, that odor of dust and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> dampness which one finds in all rooms
+that have long been closed.</p>
+
+<p>The time was passing, the insignia must be found, and Renovales, already
+accustomed to the room, opened the clothes-press, expecting to find them
+in it.</p>
+
+<p>There, too, the wood seemed to scatter, as he opened the door, a perfume
+like that of the other room. It was fainter, more vague, more distant.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales thought it was an illusion of his senses. But no; from the
+depths of the clothes-press came an invisible vapor wrapping him in its
+caressing breath. There were no clothes there. His eyes recognized
+immediately in the bottom of a compartment the boxes he was looking for;
+but he did not reach out his hands for them; he stood motionless, lost
+in the contemplation of a thousand trivial objects that reminded him of
+Josephina.</p>
+
+<p>She was there, too; she came forth to meet him, more personal, more real
+than from among the heap of old clothes. Her gloves seemed to preserve
+the warmth and the outline of those hands which once had run caressingly
+through the artist's hair, her collars reminded him of her warm ivory
+neck where he used to place his kisses.</p>
+
+<p>His hands turned over everything with painful curiosity. An old fan,
+carefully put away, seemed to move him in spite of its sorry appearance.
+Among its broken folds he could see a trace of old colors&mdash;a head he had
+painted when his wife was only a friend&mdash;a gift for Se&ntilde;orita de
+Torrealta who wanted to have something done by the young artist. At the
+bottom of a case shone two huge pearls, surrounded by diamonds; a
+present from Milan, the first jewel of real worth which he had bought
+for his wife, as they were walking through the Piazza del Duomo; a whole
+remittance from his manager in Rome invested in this costly trinket
+which made the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span> little woman flush with pleasure while her eyes rested
+on him with intense gratitude.</p>
+
+<p>His eager fingers, as they turned over boxes, belts, handkerchiefs and
+gloves, came upon souvenirs with which her person was forever connected.
+That poor woman had lived for him, only for him, as if her own existence
+were nothing, as if it had no meaning unless it were joined with his. He
+found carefully put away among belts and band-boxes&mdash;photographs of the
+places where she had spent her youth; the buildings of Rome; the
+mountains of the old Papal States, the canals of Venice&mdash;relics of the
+past which no doubt were of great value to her because they called up
+the image of her husband. And among these papers he saw dry, crushed
+flowers, proud roses, or modest wild flowers, withered leaves, nameless
+souvenirs whose importance Renovales realized, suspecting that they
+recalled some happy moment completely forgotten by him.</p>
+
+<p>The artist's portraits, at different ages, rose from all the corners,
+entangled among belts or buried under the piles of handkerchiefs. Then
+several bundles of letters appeared, the ink reddened with time, written
+in a hand that made the artist uneasy. He recognized it; it was dimly
+associated in his memory with some person whose name had escaped him.
+Fool! It was his own handwriting, the laborious heavy hand of his youth
+which was dexterous only with the brush. There in those yellow folds was
+the whole story of his life, his intellectual efforts to say "pretty
+things" like men who write. Not one was missing; the letters of their
+early engagement when, after they had seen and talked to each other,
+they still felt that they must put on paper what their lips did not
+venture to say; others with Italian stamps, exuberant with extravagant
+expressions of love, short notes he sent her when he was going to spend
+a few days with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> some other artists at Naples, or to visit some dead
+city in the Marcha; then the letters from Paris to the old Venetian
+palace, inquiring anxiously for the little girl, asking about the
+nursing, trembling with fear at the possibility of the inevitable
+diseases of childhood.</p>
+
+<p>Not one was lacking; all were there, put away like fetishes, perfumed
+with love, tied up with ribbons like the balsam and swathings of a
+mummified life. Her letters had had a different fate, her written love
+had been scattered, lost in the void. They had been left forgotten in
+old suits, burned in the fireplaces, or had fallen into strange hands,
+where they provoked laughter at their tender simplicity. The only
+letters he kept were a few of the other woman's and, as he thought of
+this, he was seized with remorse, with infinite shame at his evil
+doings.</p>
+
+<p>He read the first lines of some of them, with a strange feeling, as if
+they were written by another man, wondering at their passionate tone.
+And it was he who had written that! How he loved Josephina then! It did
+not seem possible that this affection could have ended so coldly. He was
+surprised at the indifference of the last years; he no longer remembered
+the troubles of their life together; he saw his wife now as she was in
+her youth, with her calm face, her quiet smile and admiration in her
+eyes.</p>
+
+<p>He continued to read, passing eagerly from letter to letter. He wondered
+at his own youth, virtuous in spite of his passionate nature, at the
+chastity of his devotion to his wife, the only, the unquestionable one.
+He experienced the joy, tinged with melancholy, which a decrepit old man
+feels at the contemplation of his youthful portrait. And he had been
+like that! From the bottom of his soul, a stern voice seemed to rise in
+a reproachful tone, "Yes, like that, when you were good, when you were
+honorable."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He became so absorbed in his reading that he did not notice the lapse of
+time. Suddenly he heard steps in the distant hallway, the rustle of
+skirts, his daughter's voice. Outside the house a horn was tooting; his
+haughty son-in-law telling him to hurry; trembling with fear at the
+prospect of being discovered, he took the insignia and the ribbons out
+of their cases and hastily closed the door of the clothes-press.</p>
+
+<p>The reception of the Academy was almost a failure for Renovales. The
+countess found him very interesting, with his face pale with excitement,
+his breast starred with jewels and his shirt front cut with several
+bright lines of colors. But as soon as he stood up amid general
+curiosity, with his manuscript in his hand, and began to read the first
+paragraphs, a murmur arose which kept increasing and finally drowned out
+his voice. He read thickly, with the haste of a school-boy who wants to
+have it over, without noticing what he was saying, in a monotonous
+sing-song. The sonorous rehearsals in the studio, the careful
+preparation of dramatic gestures was forgotten. His mind seemed to be
+somewhere else, far away from that ceremony; his eyes saw nothing but
+the letters. The fashionable assemblage went out, glad they had gathered
+and seen each other again. Many lips laughed at the speech behind their
+gauze fans, delighted to be able to scratch indirectly his friend the
+Alberca woman.</p>
+
+<p>"Awful, my dear! Insufferably boring!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IIb" id="IIb"></a>II</h2>
+
+
+<p>As soon as he awoke the next day, Renovales felt that he must have open
+air, light, space, and he went out of the house, not stopping in his
+walk, up the Castellana, until he reached the clearing near the
+Exhibition Hall.</p>
+
+<p>The night before he had dined at the Albercas'&mdash;almost a formal banquet
+in honor of his entrance into the Academy, at which many of the
+distinguished gentlemen who formed the countess's coterie were present.
+She seemed radiant with joy, as if she were celebrating a triumph of her
+own. The count treated the famous master with greater respect than ever;
+he had just advanced another step in glory. His respect for all honorary
+distinctions made him admire that Academic medal, the only distinction
+he could not add to his load of insignia.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales spent a bad night. The countess's champagne did not agree with
+him. He had gone home with a sort of fear, as if something unusual was
+awaiting him which his uneasiness could not explain. He took off the
+dress clothes which had been torturing him for several hours and went to
+bed, surprised at the vague fear that followed him even to the
+threshhold of his room. He saw nothing unusual around him, his room
+presented the same appearance it always did. He feel asleep, overcome by
+weariness, by the digestive torpor of that extraordinary banquet, and he
+did not awake at all during the night; but his sleep was cruel, tossed
+with dreams that perhaps made him groan.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On awakening, late in the morning, at the steps of his servant in the
+dressing room, he realized by the tumbled condition of the bed-clothes,
+by the cold sweat on his forehead and the weariness of his body what a
+restless night he had passed amid nervous starts.</p>
+
+<p>His brain, still heavy with sleep, could not unravel the memories of the
+night. He knew only that he had had unpleasant dreams; perhaps he had
+wept. The one thing he could recall was a pale face, rising from among
+the black veils of unconsciousness, around which all his dreams were
+centered. It was not Josephina; the face had the expression of a person
+of another world.</p>
+
+<p>But as his mental numbness gradually disappeared, while he was washing
+and dressing, and while the servant was helping him on with his
+overcoat, he thought, summoning his memories with an effort, that it
+might be she. Yes, it was she. Now he remembered that in his dream he
+had been conscious of that perfume which had followed him since the day
+before, which accompanied him to the Academy, disturbing his reading,
+and which had gone with him to the banquet, running between his eyes and
+Concha's like a mist, through which he looked at her, without seeing
+her.</p>
+
+<p>The coolness of the morning cleared his mind. The wide prospect from the
+heights of the Exhibition Hall seemed to blot out instantly the memories
+of the night.</p>
+
+<p>A wind from the mountains was blowing on the plateau near the
+Hippodrome. As he walked against the wind, he felt a buzz in his ears,
+like the distant roar of the sea. In the background, beyond the slopes
+with their little red houses and wintry poplars, bare as broomsticks,
+the mountains of Guadarrama stood out, luminously clear against the blue
+sky, with their snowy crests and their huge peaks which seemed made of
+salt. In the opposite direction, sunk in a deep cut, appeared the
+covering of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span> Madrid; the black roofs, the pointed towers&mdash;all indistinct
+in a haze that gave the buildings in the background the vague blue of
+the mountains.</p>
+
+<p>The plateau, covered with wretched, thin grass, its furrows stiffly
+frozen, flashed here and there in the sunlight. The bits of tile on the
+ground, broken pieces of china and tin cans reflected the light as if
+they were precious metals.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales looked for a long while at the back of the Exhibition Palace;
+the yellow walls trimmed with red brick which hardly rose above the edge
+of the clearing; the flat zinc roofs, shining like dead seas; the
+central cupola, huge, swollen, cutting the sky with its black curves,
+like a balloon on the point of rising. From one wing of the Palace came
+the sound of bugles, prolonging their warlike notes to the accompaniment
+of the hoofbeats amid clouds of dust. Beside one door swords were
+flashing and the sun was reflected on patent-leather hats.</p>
+
+<p>The painter smiled. That palace had been erected for them, and now the
+rural police occupied it. Once every two years Art entered it, claiming
+the place from the horses of the guardians of peace. Statues were set up
+in rooms that smelt of oats and stout shoes. But this anomaly did not
+last long; the intruder was driven out, as soon as the place was
+beginning to have a semblance of European culture, and there remained in
+the Exhibition Palace the true, the national, the privileged police, the
+sorry jades of holy authority which galloped down to the streets of
+Madrid when its slothful peace was at rare intervals disturbed.</p>
+
+<p>As the master looked at the black cupola, he remembered the days of
+exhibitions; he saw the long-haired, anxious youths, now gentle and
+flattering, now angry and iconoclastic, coming from all the cities of
+Spain with their pictures under their arms and mighty ambitions in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span>
+their minds. He smiled at the thought of the unpleasantness and disgust
+he had suffered under that roof, when the turbulent throng of artists
+crowded around him, annoyed him, admiring him more because of his
+position as an influential judge than because of his works. It was he
+who awarded the prizes in the opinion of those young fellows who
+followed him with looks of fear and hope. On the afternoon when the
+prizes were awarded, groups rushed out to meet him in the portico at the
+news of his arrival; they greeted him with extravagant demonstrations of
+respect. Some walked in front of him, talking loudly. "Who? Renovales?
+The greatest painter in the world. Next to Vel&aacute;squez." And at the end of
+the afternoon, when the two sheets of paper were placed on the columns
+of the rotunda, with the lists of winners, the master prudently slipped
+out to avoid the final explosion. The childish soul that every artist
+has within him burst out frankly at the announcement. False pretences
+were over; every man showed his true nature. Some hid between the
+statues, dejected and ashamed, with their fists in their eyes, weeping
+at the thought of the return to their distant home, of the long misery
+they had suffered with no other hope than that which had just vanished.
+Others stood straight as roosters, their ears red, their lips pale,
+looking toward the entrance of the palace with flaming eyes, as if they
+wanted to see from there a certain pretentious house with a Greek fa&ccedil;ade
+and a gold inscription. "The fossil! It is a shame that the fortunes of
+the younger men, who really amount to something, are entrusted to an old
+fogey who has run out, a 'four-flusher' who will never leave anything
+worth while behind him!" Oh, from those moments had arisen all the
+annoyances of his artistic activity. Every time that he heard of an
+unjust censure, a brutal denial of his ability, a merciless attack in
+some obscure paper, he remem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span>bered the rotunda of the Exhibition, that
+stormy crowd of painters around the bits of paper which contained their
+sentences. He thought with wonder and sympathy of the blindness of those
+youths who cursed life because of a failure, and were capable of giving
+their health, their vigor, in exchange for the sorry glory of a picture,
+less lasting even than the frail canvas. Every medal was a rung on the
+ladder; they measured the importance of these awards, giving them a
+meaning like that of a soldier's stripes. And he too had been young! He
+too had embittered the best years of his life in these combats, like
+am&oelig;b&aelig; who struggle together in a drop of water, fancying they may
+conquer a huge world! What interest had eternal beauty in these
+regimental ambitions, in this ladder-climbing fever of those who strove
+to be her interpreters?</p>
+
+<p>The master went home. The walk had made him forget his anxiety of the
+night before. His body, weakened by his easy life, seemed to acknowledge
+this exercise with a violent reaction. His legs itched slightly, the
+blood throbbed in his temples, it seemed to spread through his body in a
+wave of warmth. He exulted in his power and tasted the joy of every
+organism that is performing its functions in harmonious regularity.</p>
+
+<p>As he crossed the garden, he was humming a song. He smiled to the
+concierge's wife who had opened the gate for him and to the ugly
+watchdog who came up with a caressing whine to lick his trousers. He
+opened the glass door, passing from the noise outside into deep,
+convent-like silence. His feet sank in the soft rugs; the only sounds
+were the mysterious trembling of the pictures which covered the walls up
+to the ceiling, the creaking of invisible wood-borers in the picture
+frames, the swing of the hangings in a breath of air. Everything that
+the master had painted; studies or whims,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> finished or unfinished, was
+placed on the ground floor, together with pictures and drawings by some
+famous companions or favorite pupils. Milita had amused herself for a
+long time before she was married, in this decoration which reached even
+to poorly lighted hallways.</p>
+
+<p>As he left his hat and stick on the hat-rack, the eyes of the master
+fell on a nearby water-color, as if this picture attracted his attention
+among the others which surrounded it. He was surprised that he should
+now notice it of a sudden, after passing by it so many times without
+seeing it. It was not bad; but it was timid; it showed lack of
+experience. Whose could it be? Perhaps Soldevilla's. But as he drew near
+to see it better, he smiled. It was his own! How differently he painted
+then! He tried to remember when and where he had painted it. To help his
+memory, he looked closely at that charming woman's head, with its dreamy
+eyes, wondering who the model could have been.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly a cloud came over his face. The artist seemed confused,
+ashamed. How stupid! It was his wife, the Josephina of the early days,
+when he used to gaze at her admiringly, delighting in reproducing her
+face.</p>
+
+<p>He threw the blame for his slowness on Milita and determined to have the
+study taken away from there. His wife's portrait ought not be in the
+hall, beside the hat-rack.</p>
+
+<p>After luncheon he gave orders to the servant to take down the picture
+and move it into one of the drawing-rooms. The servant looked surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"There are so many portraits of the mistress. You have painted her so
+many times, sir. The house is full."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales mimicked the servant's expression. "So many! So many!" He knew
+how many times he had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> painted her! With a sudden curiosity before going
+to the studio, he entered the parlor where Josephina received her
+callers. There, in the place of honor, he saw a large portrait of his
+wife, painted in Rome, a dainty woman with a lace mantilla, a black
+ruffled skirt and, in her hand, a tortoise-shell fan&mdash;a veritable Goya.
+He gazed for a moment at that attractive face, shaded by the black lace,
+its oriental eyes in sharp contrast to its aristocratic pallor. How
+beautiful Josephina was in those days!</p>
+
+<p>He opened the windows the better to see the portrait and the light fell
+on the dark red walls making the frames of other smaller pictures flash.</p>
+
+<p>Then the painter saw that the Goyesque picture was not the only one.
+Other Josephinas accompanied him in the solitude. He gazed with
+astonishment at the face of his wife, which seemed to rise from all
+sides of the parlor. Little studies of women of the people or ladies of
+the 18th century; water-colors of Moorish women; Greek women with the
+stiff severity of Alma-Tadema's archaic figures; everything in the
+parlor, everything he had painted, was Josephina, had her face, or
+showed traces of her with the vagueness of a memory.</p>
+
+<p>He passed to the adjoining parlor and there, too, his wife's face,
+painted by him, came to meet him among other pictures by his friends.</p>
+
+<p>When had he done all that? He could not remember; he was surprised at
+the enormous quantity of work he had performed unconsciously. He seemed
+to have spent his whole life painting Josephina.</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards, in all the hallways, in all the rooms where pictures were
+hung, his wife met his gaze, under the most varied aspects, frowning or
+smiling, beautiful or sad with sickness. They were sketched, simple,
+unfinished charcoal drawings of her head in the corner of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span> canvas, but
+always that glance followed him, sometimes with an expression of
+melancholy tenderness, sometimes with intense reproach. Where had his
+eyes been? He had lived amid all this without seeing it. Every day he
+had passed by Josephina without noticing her. His wife was resurrected;
+henceforth, she would sit down at table, she would enter his chamber, he
+would pass through the house always under the gaze of two eyes which in
+the past had pierced into his soul.</p>
+
+<p>The dead woman was not dead; she hovered about him, revived by his hand.
+He could not take a step without seeing her face on every side. She
+greeted him from above the doors, from the ends of the rooms she seemed
+to call him.</p>
+
+<p>In his three studios, his surprise was still greater. All his most
+intimate painting, which he had done as study, from impulse, without any
+desire for sale, was stored away there, and all was a memory of the dead
+woman. The pictures which dazzled the callers were hung low, down on the
+level of the eyes, on easels, or fastened to the wall, amid the
+sumptuous furniture; up above, reaching to the ceiling were arranged the
+studies, memories, unframed canvases, like old, forgotten works, and in
+this collection at the first glance Renovales saw the enigmatic face
+rising towards him.</p>
+
+<p>He had lived without lifting his eyes, accustomed as he was to
+everything about him, and looking around, without seeing, without
+noticing those women, different in appearance but alike in expression,
+who watched him from above. And the countess had been there several
+afternoons, to see him alone in the studio! And the Persian silk
+draperies, hung on lances before the deep divan, had not hidden them
+from that sad, fixed gaze which seemed to multiply in the upper stretch
+of the walls.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>To forget his remorse, he amused himself by counting the canvases which
+reproduced his wife's dainty little face. They were many&mdash;the whole life
+of an artist. He tried to remember when and where he had painted them.
+In the first days of his love, he felt that he must paint her, with an
+irresistible impulse to transfer to the canvas everything he delighted
+to see, everything he loved. Afterwards, it had been a desire to flatter
+her, to coax her with a false show of affection, to convince her that
+she was the only object of his artistic worship, copying her in a vague
+likeness, giving to her features, marred by illness, a soft veil of
+idealism. He could not live without working and, like many painters, he
+used as models the people around him. His daughter had carried to her
+new home a load of paintings, all the pictures, rough sketches,
+water-colors and panels which represented her from the time she used to
+play with the cat, dressing him in baby clothes, until she was a proud
+young lady, courted by Soldevilla and the man who was now her husband.</p>
+
+<p>The mother had remained there, rising after death about the artist in
+oppressive profusion. All the little incidents in life had given
+Renovales an occasion to paint new pictures. He recalled his enthusiasm
+every time he saw her in a new dress. The colors changed her; she was a
+new woman, so he would declare with a vehemence which his wife took for
+admiration and which was merely the desire for a model.</p>
+
+<p>Josephina's whole life had been fixed by her husband's hand. In one
+canvas she appeared dressed in white, walking through a meadow with the
+poetic dreaminess of an Ophelia; in another, wearing a large, plumed hat
+covered with jewels, she showed the self-satisfaction of a
+manufacturer's wife, secure in her well-being; a black curtain served as
+a background for her bare neck and shoulders. In another picture she had
+her sleeves rolled<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span> up; a white apron covered her from her breast to her
+feet, on her forehead was a little wrinkle of care and weariness, and in
+her whole mien the carelessness of one who has no time to attend to the
+adornment of her person. This last was the portrait of the bitter days,
+the image of the courageous housekeeper, without servants, working with
+her delicate hands in a wretched attic, striving that the artist might
+lack nothing, that the petty annoyances of life might not come to
+distract him from his supreme efforts for success.</p>
+
+<p>This portrait filled the artist with the melancholy which the memory of
+bitter days inspires in the midst of comfort. His gratitude toward his
+brave companion brought with it once more remorse.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Josephina! Josephina!"</p>
+
+<p>When Cotoner arrived, he found the master lying face down on the couch
+with his head in his hands, as if he were asleep. He tried to interest
+him by talking about the function of the day before. A great success;
+the papers spoke of him and his speech, declaring that he was a great
+writer and could win as marked a success in literature as in art. Had he
+not read them?</p>
+
+<p>Renovales answered with a bored expression. He had found them, when he
+went out in the morning, on a table in the reception-room. He had cast a
+glance at his picture surrounded by the solid columns of his speech but
+he had put off reading the praises until later. They did not interest
+him; he was thinking of something else&mdash;he was sad.</p>
+
+<p>And in answer to Cotoner's anxious questions, who thought he must be
+ill, he said quietly:</p>
+
+<p>"I am well enough. It's melancholy. I'm tired of doing nothing. I want
+to work and haven't the strength."</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he interrupted his old friend, pointing to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> all the portraits
+of Josephina, as if they were new works which he had just produced.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner expressed surprise. He knew them all; they had been there for
+years. What was strange about them?</p>
+
+<p>The master told him of his recent surprise. He had lived beside them
+without seeing them, he had just discovered them two hours before. And
+Cotoner laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"You are rather unsettled, Mariano. You live without noticing what is
+around you. That is why you don't know of Soldevilla's marriage to a
+rich girl. The poor boy was disappointed because his master was not
+present at the wedding."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales shrugged his shoulders. What did he care for such follies?
+There was a long pause and the master, pensive and sad, suddenly raised
+his head with a determined expression.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you think of those portraits, Pepe?" he asked anxiously. "Is it
+she? I couldn't have made a mistake in painting them, I couldn't have
+seen her different from what she really was, could I?"</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner broke out laughing. Really, the master was out of his mind. What
+questions! Those portraits were marvels, like all of his work. But
+Renovales insisted with the impatience of doubt. His opinion! Were those
+Josephinas like his wife!</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly," said the Bohemian. "Why, man alive, their fidelity to life is
+the most astonishing thing about your portraits!"</p>
+
+<p>He declared this confidently, but a shadow of doubt worried him. Yes, it
+was Josephina, but there was something unusual, idealized about her. Her
+features looked the same, but they had an inner light that made them
+more beautiful. It was a defect he had always found in these pictures,
+but he said nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"And she," insisted the master, "was she really beau<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span>tiful? What did you
+think of her as a woman? Tell me, Pepe,&mdash;without hesitating. It's
+strange, I can't remember very well what she was like."</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner was disconcerted by these questions, and answered with some
+embarrassment. What an odd thing! Josephina was very good&mdash;an angel; he
+always remembered her with gratitude. He had wept for her as for a
+mother, though she might almost have been his daughter. She had always
+been very considerate and thoughtful of the poor Bohemian.</p>
+
+<p>"Not that," interrupted the master. "I want to know if you thought she
+was beautiful, if she really was beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>"Why, man, yes," said Cotoner resolutely. "She was beautiful or, rather,
+attractive. At the end she seemed a bit changed. Her illness! But all in
+all, an angel."</p>
+
+<p>And the master, calmed by these words, stood looking at his own works.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she was very beautiful," he said slowly, without turning his eyes
+from the canvases. "Now I recognize it; now I see her better. It's
+strange, Pepe. It seems as if I have found Josephina to-day after a long
+journey. I had forgotten her; I was no longer certain what her face was
+like."</p>
+
+<p>There was another long pause, and once more the master began to ply his
+friend with anxious questions.</p>
+
+<p>"Did she love me? Do you think she really loved me? Was it love that
+made her sometimes act so&mdash;strangely?"</p>
+
+<p>This time Cotoner did not hesitate as he had at the former questions.</p>
+
+<p>"Love you? Wildly, Mariano. As no man has been loved in this world. All
+that there was between you was jealousy&mdash;too much affection. I know it
+better than anyone else; old friends, like me, who go in and out of the
+house just like old dogs, are treated with intimacy<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> and hear things the
+husband does not know. Believe me, Mariano, no one will ever love you as
+she did. Her sulky words were only passing clouds. I am sure you no
+longer remember them. What did not pass was the other, the love she bore
+you. I am positive; you know that she told me everything, that I was the
+only person she could tolerate toward the end."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales seemed to thank his friend for these words with a glance of
+joy.</p>
+
+<p>They went out to walk at the end of the afternoon, going toward the
+center of Madrid. Renovales talked of their youth, of their days in
+Rome. He laughed as he reminded Cotoner of his famous stock of Popes, he
+recalled the funny shows in the studios, the noisy entertainments, and
+then, after he was married, the evenings of friendly intercourse in that
+pretty little dining-room on the Via Margutta; the arrival of the
+Bohemian and the other artists of his circle to drink a cup of tea with
+the young couple; the loud discussions over painting, which made the
+neighbors protest, while she, his Josephina, still surprised at finding
+herself the mistress of a household, without her mother, and surrounded
+by men, smiled timidly to them all, thinking that those fearful
+comrades, with hair like highwaymen but as innocent and peevish as
+children, were very funny and interesting.</p>
+
+<p>"Those were the days, Pepe! Youth, which we never appreciate till it has
+gone!"</p>
+
+<p>Walking straight ahead, without knowing where they were going, absorbed
+in their conversation and their memories, they suddenly found themselves
+at the Puerta del Sol. Night had fallen; the electric lights were
+coming out; the shop windows threw patches of light on the sidewalks.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner looked at the clock on the Government Building.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you going to the Alberca woman's house to-night?"</p>
+
+<p>Renovales seemed to awaken. Yes, he must go; they expected him. But he
+was not going. His friend looked at him with a shocked expression, as if
+he considered it a serious error to scorn a dinner.</p>
+
+<p>The painter seemed to lack the courage to spend the evening between
+Concha and her husband. He thought of her with a sort of aversion; he
+felt as if he might brutally repel her constant caresses and tell
+everything to the husband in an outburst of frankness. It was a
+disgrace, treachery&mdash;that life <i>&agrave; trois</i> which the society woman
+accepted as the happiest of states.</p>
+
+<p>"It's intolerable," he said to dissipate his friend's surprise. "I can't
+stand her. She's a regular barnacle, and won't let me go for a minute."</p>
+
+<p>He had never spoken to Cotoner of his affair with the Alberca woman, but
+he did not have to tell him anything, he assumed that he knew.</p>
+
+<p>"But she's pretty, Mariano," said he. "A wonderful woman! You know I
+admire her. You might use her for your Greek picture."</p>
+
+<p>The master cast at him a glance of pity for his ignorance. He felt a
+desire to scoff at her, to injure her, thus justifying his indifference.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing but a fa&ccedil;ade. A face and a figure."</p>
+
+<p>And bending over toward his friend he whispered to him seriously as if
+he were revealing the secret of a terrible crime.</p>
+
+<p>"She's knock-kneed. A regular swindle."</p>
+
+<p>A satyr-like smile spread over Cotoner's lips and his ears wriggled. It
+was the joy of a chaste man; the satisfaction of knowing the secret
+defects of a beauty who was out of his reach.</p>
+
+<p>The master did not want to leave his friend. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span> needed him, he looked
+at him with tender sympathy, seeing in him something of his dead wife.
+When she was sad, he had been her confidant. When her nerves were on
+edge, this simple man's words ended the crisis in a flood of tears. With
+whom could he talk about her better?</p>
+
+<p>"We will dine together, Pepe; we will go to the <i>Italianos</i>&mdash;a Roman
+banquet, <i>ravioli</i>, <i>piccata</i>, anything you want and a bottle of Chianti
+or two, as many as you can drink, and at the end sparkling Asti, better
+than champagne. Does that suit you, old man?"</p>
+
+<p>Arm in arm they walked along, their heads high, a smile on their lips,
+like two young painters, eager to celebrate a recent sale with a
+gluttonous relief from their misery.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales went back into his memories and poured them out in a torrent.
+He reminded Cotoner of a <i>trattoria</i> in an alley in Rome, beyond the
+statue of Pasquino, before you reach the Via Governo Vecchio, a chop
+house of ecclesiastical quiet, run by the former cook of a cardinal. The
+shelves of the establishment were always covered with the headgear of
+the profession, priestly tiles. The merriment of the artists shocked the
+sedate frugality of the habitues, priests of the Papal palace or
+visitors who were in Rome scheming advancement; loud-mouthed lawyers in
+dirty frock-coats from the nearby Palace of Justice, loaded with papers.</p>
+
+<p>"What <i>maccheroni!</i> Remember, Pepe? How poor Josephina liked it!"</p>
+
+<p>They used to reach the <i>trattoria</i> at night in a merry company&mdash;she on
+his arm and around them the friends whose admiration for the promising
+young painter attracted them to him. Josephina worshiped the mysteries
+of the kitchen, the traditional secrets of the solemn table of the
+princes of the Church, which had come down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> to the street, taking refuge
+in that little room. On the white table cloth trembled the amber
+reflection of the wine of Orvieto in decanters, a thick, yellow, golden
+liquid, of clerical sweetness, a drink of old-time pontiffs, which
+descended to the stomach like fire and more than once had mounted to
+heads covered with the tiara.</p>
+
+<p>On moonlit nights, they used to go from there and walk to the Colosseum
+to look at the gigantic, monstrous ruin under the flood of blue light.
+Josephina, shaking with nervous excitement, went down into the dark
+tunnels, groping along among the fallen stones, till she was on the open
+slope, facing the silent circle, which seemed to enclose the corpse of a
+whole people. Looking around with anxiety, she thought of the terrible
+beasts which had trod upon that sand. Suddenly came a frightful roar and
+a black beast leaped forth from the deep vomitory. Josephina clung to
+her husband, with a shriek of terror, and all laughed. It was Simpson,
+an American painter, who bent over, walking on all fours, to attack his
+companions with fierce cries.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember, Pepe?" Renovales kept saying, "What days! What joy!
+What a fine companion the little girl was before her illness saddened
+her!"</p>
+
+<p>They dined, talking of their youth, mingling with their memories the
+image of the dead. Afterwards, they walked the streets till midnight,
+and Renovales was always going back to those days, recalling his
+Josephina, as if he had spent his life worshiping her. Cotoner was tired
+of the conversation and said "Good-by" to the master. What new hobby was
+this? Poor Josephina was very interesting, but they had spent the whole
+evening without talking of anything else, as though memory of her was
+the only thing in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales started home impatiently; he took a cab to get there sooner.
+He felt as anxious as if some one<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span> were waiting for him; that showy
+house, cold and solitary before, seemed animated with a spirit he could
+not define, a beloved soul which filled it, pervading all like perfume.</p>
+
+<p>As he entered, preceded by the sleepy servant, his first glance was for
+the water-color. He smiled; he wanted to bid good-night to that head
+whose eyes rested on him.</p>
+
+<p>For all the Josephinas who met his gaze, rising from the shadow of the
+walls, as he turned on the electric lights in the parlors and hallways,
+he had the same smile and greeting. He no longer was uneasy in the
+presence of those faces which he had looked at in the morning with
+surprise and fear. She saw him; she read his thoughts; she forgave him,
+surely. She had always been so good!</p>
+
+<p>He hesitated a moment on his way, wishing to go to the studios and turn
+on the lights. There he could see her full length, in all her grace; he
+would talk to her, he would ask her forgiveness in the deep silence of
+those great rooms. But the master stopped. What was he thinking of? Was
+he going to lose his senses? He drew his hand across his forehead, as if
+he wanted to wipe these ideas out of his mind. No doubt it was the Asti
+that led him to such absurdities. To sleep!</p>
+
+<p>When he was in the dark, lying in his daughter's little bed, he felt
+uneasy. He could not sleep, he was uncomfortable. He was tempted to go
+out of the room and take refuge in the deserted bed-chamber as if only
+there could he find rest and sleep. Oh, the Venetian bed, that princely
+piece of furniture which kept his whole history, where he had whispered
+words of love; where they had talked so many times in low tones of his
+longing for glory and wealth; where his daughter was born!</p>
+
+<p>With the energy which showed in all his whims, the master put on his
+clothes, and quietly, as if he feared<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span> to be overheard by his servant
+who slept nearby, made his way to the chamber.</p>
+
+<p>He turned the key with the caution of a thief, and advanced on tiptoe,
+under the soft, pink light which an old lantern shed from the center of
+the ceiling. He carefully stretched out the mattresses on the abandoned
+bed. There were no sheets nor pillows. The room so long deserted was
+cold. What a pleasant night he was going to spend! How well he would
+sleep there! The gold-embroidered cushions from a sofa would serve as a
+pillow. He wrapped himself in an overcoat and got into bed, dressed,
+putting out the light so as not to see reality, to dream, peopling the
+darkness with the sweet deceits of his fancy.</p>
+
+<p>On those mattresses, Josephina had slept. He did not see her as in the
+last days,&mdash;sick, emaciated, worn with physical suffering. His mind
+repelled that painful image, bent on beautiful illusions. The Josephina
+whom he saw, the Josephina within him, was the other, of the first days
+of their love, and not as she had been in reality but as he had seen
+her, as he had painted her.</p>
+
+<p>His memory passed over a great stretch of time, dark and stormy; it
+leaped from the regret of the present to the happy days of youth. He no
+longer recalled the years of trying confinement, when they quarreled
+together, unable to follow the same path. They were unimportant
+disturbances in life. He thought only of her smiling kindness, her
+generosity, and submissiveness. How tenderly they had lived together for
+a part of their life, in that bed which now knew only the loneliness of
+his body.</p>
+
+<p>The artist shivered under his inadequate covering. In this abnormal
+situation, exterior impressions called up memories&mdash;fragments of the
+past that slowly came to his mind. The cold made him think of the rainy
+nights in Venice, when it poured for hour after hour on the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> narrow
+alleys and deserted canals in the deep, solemn silence of a city without
+horses, without wheels, without any sound of life, except the lapping of
+the solitary water on the marble stairways. They were in the same calm,
+under the warm eider-down, amid the same furniture which he now half saw
+in the shadow.</p>
+
+<p>Through the slits of the lowered blind shone the glow of the lamp which
+lighted the nearby canal. On the ceiling a spot of light flickered with
+the reflection of the dead water, constantly crossed by lines of shadow.
+They, closely embraced, watched this play of light and water above them.
+They knew that outside it was cold and damp; they exulted in their
+physical warmth, in the selfishness of being together, with that
+delicious sense of comfort, buried in silence as if the world were a
+thing of the past, as if their chamber were a warm oasis, in the midst
+of cold and darkness.</p>
+
+<p>Sometimes they heard a mournful cry in the silence. <i>Aooo!</i> It was the
+gondolier giving warning before he turned the corner. Across the spot of
+light which shimmered on the ceiling slipped a black, Lilliputian
+gondola, a shadow toy, on the stern of which bent a manikin the size of
+a fly, wielding the oar. And, thinking of those who passed in the rain,
+lashed by the icy gusts, they experienced a new pleasure and clung
+closer to each other under the soft cider-down and their lips met,
+disturbing the calm of their rest with the noisy insolence of youth and
+love.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales no longer felt cold. He turned restlessly on the mattresses;
+the metallic embroidery of the cushions stuck in his face; he stretched
+out his arms in the darkness, and the silence was broken by a despairing
+cry, the lament of a child who demands the impossible, who asks for the
+moon.</p>
+
+<p>"Josephina! Josephina!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IIIb" id="IIIb"></a>III</h2>
+
+
+<p>One morning the painter sent an urgent summons to Cotoner and the latter
+arrived in great alarm at the terms of the message.</p>
+
+<p>"It's nothing serious," said Renovales. "I want you to tell me where
+Josephina was buried. I want to see her."</p>
+
+<p>It was a desire which had been slowly taking form in his mind during
+several nights; a whim of the long hours of sleeplessness through which
+he dragged in the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>More than a week before, he had moved into the large chamber, choosing
+among the bed linen, with a painstaking care that surprised the
+servants, the most worn sheets, which called up old memories with their
+embroidery. He did not find in this linen that perfume of the closets
+which had disturbed him so deeply; but there was something in them, the
+illusion, the certainty that she had many a time touched them.</p>
+
+<p>After soberly and severely telling Cotoner of his wish, Renovales felt
+that he must offer some excuse. It was disgraceful that he did not know
+where Josephina was; that he had not yet gone to visit her. His grief at
+her death had left him helpless and afterward, the long journey.</p>
+
+<p>"You always know things, Pepe! You had charge of the funeral
+arrangements. Tell me where she is; take me to see her."</p>
+
+<p>Up to that time he had not thought of her remains. He remembered the day
+of the funeral, his dramatic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> grief which kept him in a corner with his
+face buried in his hands. His intimate friends, the elect, who
+penetrated to his retreat, clad in black, and wearing gloomy faces,
+caught his hand and pressed it effusively. "Courage, Mariano. Be strong,
+master." And outside the house, a constant trampling of horses' feet;
+the iron fence black with the curious crowd, a double file of carriages
+as far as the eye could see; reporters going from group to group, taking
+down names.</p>
+
+<p>All Madrid was there. And they had carried her away to the slow step of
+a pair of horses with waving plumes, amid the undertaker's men in white
+wigs and gold batons&mdash;and he had forgotten her, had felt no interest in
+seeing the corner of the cemetery where she was buried forever, under
+the glare of the sun, under the night rains that dripped upon her grave.
+He cursed himself now for this outrageous neglect.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me where she is, Pepe. Take me. I want to see her."</p>
+
+<p>He implored with the eagerness of remorse; he wanted to see her once, as
+soon as possible, like a sinner who fears death and cries for
+absolution.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner acceded to this immediate trip. She was in the Almudena
+cemetery, which had been closed for some time. Only those who had long
+standing titles to a lot went there now. Cotoner had desired to bury
+Josephina beside her mother in the same inclosure where the stone that
+covered the "lamented genius of diplomacy" was growing tarnished. He
+wanted her to rest among her own.</p>
+
+<p>On the way, Renovales felt a sort of anguish. Like a sleep-walker he saw
+the streets of the city passing by the carriage window, then they went
+down a steep hill, ill-kempt gardens, where loafers were sleeping,
+leaning against the trees, or women were combing their hair in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span> the sun;
+a bridge; wretched suburbs with tumble-down houses; then the open
+country, hilly roads and at last a grove of cypress trees beyond an
+adobe wall and the tops of marble buildings, angels stretching out their
+wings with a trumpet at their lips, great crosses, torch-holders mounted
+on tripods, and a pure, blue sky which seemed to smile with superhuman
+indifference at the excitement of that ant, named Renovales.</p>
+
+<p>He was going to see her; to step on the ground which covered her body;
+to breathe an atmosphere in which there was still perhaps some of that
+warmth which was the breath of the dead woman's soul. What would he say
+to her?</p>
+
+<p>As he entered the graveyard he looked at the keeper, an ugly, dismal old
+fellow, as pale and yellow and greasy as a wax candle. That man lived
+constantly near Josephina! He was seized with generous gratitude; he had
+to restrain himself, thinking of his companion, or he would have given
+him all the money he had with him.</p>
+
+<p>Their steps resounded in the silence. They felt the murmuring calm of an
+abandoned garden about them, where there were more pavilions and statues
+than trees. They went down ruined colonnades, which echoed their steps
+strangely; over slabs which sounded hollow under their feet,&mdash;the void,
+trembling at the light touch of life.</p>
+
+<p>The dead who slept there were dead indeed, without the least
+resurrection of memory, completely deserted, sharing in the universal
+decay,&mdash;unnamed, separated from life forever. From the beehive close by,
+no one came to give new life with tears and offerings to the ephemeral
+personality they once had, to the name which marked them for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>Wreaths hung from the crosses, black and unraveled, with a swarm of
+insects in their fragments. The exuber<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span>ant vegetation, where no one ever
+passed, stretched in every direction, loosening the tombstones with its
+roots, springing the steps of the resounding stairways. The rain, slowly
+filtering through the ground, had produced hollows. Some of the slabs
+were cracked open, revealing deep holes.</p>
+
+<p>They had to walk carefully, fearing that the hollow ground would
+suddenly open; they had to avoid the depressions where a stone with
+letters of pale gold and noble coats-of-arms lay half on its side.</p>
+
+<p>The painter walked trembling with the sadness of an immense
+disappointment, questioning the value of his greatest interests. And
+this was life! Human beauty ended like this! This was all that the human
+mind came to and here it must stop in all its pride!</p>
+
+<p>"Here it is!" said Cotoner.</p>
+
+<p>They had entered between two rows of tombs so close together that as
+they passed they brushed against the old ornaments which crumbled and
+fell at the touch.</p>
+
+<p>It was a simple tomb, a sort of coffin of white marble which rose a few
+inches above the ground, with an elevation at one end, like the bolster
+of a bed and surmounted by a cross.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales was cold. There was Josephina! He read the inscription several
+times, as if he could not convince himself. It was she; the letters
+reproduced her name, with a brief lament of her inconsolable husband,
+which seemed to him senseless, artificial, disgraceful.</p>
+
+<p>He had come trembling with anxiety at the thought of the terrible moment
+when he should behold Josephina's last resting place. To feel that he
+was near her, to tread upon the ground in which she rested! He would not
+be able to resist this critical moment, he would weep like a child, he
+would fall on his knees, sobbing in deadly anguish.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Well, he was there; the tomb was before his eyes and still, they were
+dry; they looked about coldly in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>She was there! He knew it from his friend's statement, from the
+declamatory inscription on the tomb, but nothing warned him of her
+presence. He remained indifferent, looking curiously at the adjoining
+graves, filled with a monstrous desire to laugh, seeing in death only
+his sardonic buffoon's mask.</p>
+
+<p>At one side, a gentleman who rested under the endless list of his titles
+and honors, a sort of Count of Alberca, who had fallen asleep in the
+solemnity of his greatness, waiting for the angel's trumpet-blast to
+appear before the Lord with all his parchments and crosses. On the
+other, a general who rotted under a marble slab, engraved with cannon,
+guns and banners, as though he hoped to terrify death. In what ludicrous
+promiscuity Josephina had come to sleep her last sleep, mingled with,
+forms she had not known in life! They were her eternal, her final
+lovers; they carried her off from his very presence and forever,
+indifferent to the pressing concerns of the living. Oh, Death! What a
+cruel mocker! The earth! How cold and cynical!</p>
+
+<p>He was sad and disgusted at human insignificance&mdash;but he did not weep.
+He saw only the external and material&mdash;the form, always the concern of
+his thoughts. Standing before the tomb he felt merely his vulgar
+meanness, with a sort of shame. She was his wife; the wife of a great
+artist.</p>
+
+<p>He thought of the most famous sculptors, all friends of his; he would
+talk to them, they should erect an imposing sepulcher with weeping
+statues, symbolical of fidelity, gentleness and love, a sepulcher worthy
+of the companion of Renovales. And nothing more; his thought went no
+farther; his imagination could not pass<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span> beyond the hard marble nor
+penetrate the hidden mystery. The grave was speechless and empty, in the
+air there was nothing which spoke to the soul of the painter.</p>
+
+<p>He remained indifferent, unmoved by any emotion, without ceasing for a
+single moment to see reality. The cemetery was a hideous, gloomy,
+repulsive place, with an odor of decay. Renovales thought he could
+perceive a stench of putrefaction scattered in the wind which bent the
+pointed tops of the cypresses, and swayed the old wreaths and the
+branches of the rose bushes.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at Cotoner with a sort of displeasure. He was to blame for his
+coldness. His presence was a check on him which prevented him from
+showing his feelings. Though a friend, he was a stranger, an obstacle
+between him and the dead. He interfered with that silent dialogue of
+love and forgiveness of which the master had dreamed as he came. He
+would come back alone. Perhaps the cemetery would be different in
+solitude.</p>
+
+<p>And he came back; he came back the next day. The keeper greeted him with
+a smile, realizing that he was a profitable visitor.</p>
+
+<p>The cemetery seemed larger, more imposing in the silence of the bright,
+quiet morning. He had no one to talk with; he heard no human sound but
+that of his own steps. He went up stairways, crossed galleries, leaving
+behind him his indifference, thinking anxiously that every step took him
+farther from the living, that the gate with its greedy keeper was
+already far away and that he was the only living being, the only one who
+thought and could feel fear in the mournful city of thousands and
+thousands of beings, wrapped in a mystery which made them imposing amid
+the strange, dull sounds of the land beyond that terrifies with the
+blackness of its bottomless abyss.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When he reached Josephina's grave, he took off his hat.</p>
+
+<p>No one. The trees and the rose bushes trembled in the wind among the
+cross paths. Some birds were twittering above him in an acacia, and the
+sound of life, disturbing the rustling of the solitary vegetation, shed
+a certain calm over the painter's spirit, blotted out the childish fear
+he had felt before he reached there, as he crossed the echoing pavements
+of the colonnades.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time he remained motionless, absorbed in the contemplation of
+that marble case obliquely cut by a ray of sunlight, one part golden,
+the other blue in the shadow. Suddenly he shivered, as if he had
+awakened at the sound of a voice,&mdash;his own. He was talking, aloud,
+driven to cry out his thoughts, to stir this deathly silence with
+something that meant life.</p>
+
+<p>"Josephina. It is I. Do you forgive me?"</p>
+
+<p>It was a childish longing to hear the voice from beyond that might pour
+on his soul a balm of forgiveness and forgetting; a desire of humbling
+himself, of weeping, of having her listen to him, smile to him from the
+depth of the void, at the great revolution which had been carried out in
+his spirit. He wanted to tell her&mdash;and he did tell her silently with the
+speech of his feelings&mdash;that he loved her, that he had resuscitated her
+in his thoughts, now that he had lost her forever, with a love which he
+had never had for her in her earthly life. He felt ashamed before her
+grave; ashamed of the difference of their fates.</p>
+
+<p>He begged her forgiveness for living, for still feeling vigorous and
+young, for now loving her without reality, in a wild hope, when he had
+been cold and indifferent at her departure, with his thoughts on another
+woman, hoping for her death with criminal craving. Wretch! And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> he was
+still alive! And she, so kind, so sweet, buried forever, lost in the
+depths of eternal, ruthless death!</p>
+
+<p>He wept; at last he wept those hot, sincere tears which compel
+forgiveness. It was the weeping which he had so long desired. Now he
+felt that they approached each other, that they were almost together,
+separated only by a strip of marble and a little earth. His fancy saw
+her poor remains and in their decay he loved them, he worshiped them
+with a calm passion that rose above earthly miseries. Nothing which had
+once been Josephina's could cause him repugnance or horror. If he could
+but open that white case! If he could kiss her, take her ashes with him,
+that they might go with him on his pilgrimage, like the household gods
+of the ancients! He no longer saw the cemetery, he did not hear the
+birds nor the rustling of the branches; he seemed to live in a cloud,
+looking only at that white grave, the marble slab,&mdash;the last resting
+place of his beloved.</p>
+
+<p>She forgave him; her body rose before him, such as it had been in her
+youth, as he had painted it. Her deep eyes were fixed on his, eyes that
+shone with love. He seemed to hear her childish voice laughing, admiring
+little trifles, as in the happy days. It was a resurrection,&mdash;the image
+of the dead woman was before him, formed no doubt by the invisible atoms
+of her being which floated over her grave, by something of the essence
+of her life which still fluttered around the material remains, reluctant
+to say farewell before they started on the way that leads to the depths
+of the infinite.</p>
+
+<p>His tears continued to fall in the silence, in sweet relief; his voice,
+broken by sobs, stilled the birds with fear. "Josephina! Josephina!" And
+the echo answered with dull, mocking cries, from the smooth walls of the
+mausoleums, from the invisible end of the colonnades.</p>
+
+<p>The artist could not resist the temptation to step over<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> the rusted
+chains which surrounded the grave. To feel her nearer! To overcome the
+short distance which separated them! To mock death with a loving kiss of
+intense gratitude for forgiveness!</p>
+
+<p>The huge frame of the master covered the slab of marble, his arms
+encircled it as if he would pick it up from the ground and carry it away
+with him. His lips eagerly sought the highest part of the stone.</p>
+
+<p>He wished to find the spot which covered her face and he began to kiss
+it, moving his head as if he were going to dash it against the marble.</p>
+
+<p>A sensation of stone, warmed by the sun, on his lips; a taste of dust,
+insipid and repulsive in his mouth. Renovales sat up, rose to his feet
+as if he had awakened, as if the cemetery, until then invisible, was
+suddenly restored to reality. The faint odor of decay once more struck
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Now he saw the grave, as he had seen it the day before. He no longer
+wept. The immense disappointment dried his tears, though within him he
+felt the longing for weeping increased. Horrible awakening! Josephina
+was not there; only the void was about him. It was useless to seek the
+past in the field of death. Memories could not be aroused in that cold
+ground, stirred by worms and decay. Oh, where had he come to seek his
+dreams! From what a foul dunghill he had tried to raise the roses of his
+memories!</p>
+
+<p>In fancy he saw her beneath that repugnant marble in all the
+repulsiveness of death, and this vision left him cold, indifferent. What
+had he to do with such wretchedness? No; Josephina was not there. She
+was truly dead, and if he ever was to see her it would not be beside her
+grave.</p>
+
+<p>Once more he wept&mdash;not with external tears but within; he mourned the
+bitterness of solitude, the inability<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> to exchange a single thought with
+her. He had so many things to tell her which were burning his soul! How
+he would talk with her, if some mysterious power would bring her back
+for an instant. He would implore her forgiveness; he would throw himself
+at her feet, lamenting the error of his life, the painful deceit of
+having remained beside her, indifferent, fostering hopes which had no
+fulfillment, only to groan now in the torment of irreparable loss, with
+a mad, thirsting love which worshiped the woman in death after scoring
+her in life.</p>
+
+<p>He would swear a thousand times the truth of this posthumous worship,
+this desire aroused by death. And then he would lay her once more in her
+eternal bed, and would depart in peace after his wild confession.</p>
+
+<p>But it was impossible. The silence between them would last forever. He
+must remain for all eternity with this confession of his thoughts,
+unable to tell it to her, crushed beneath its weight. She had gone away
+with rancor and scorn in her soul, forgetting their first love, and she
+would never know that it had blossomed once more after her death.</p>
+
+<p>She could not cast one glance back; she did not exist; she would never
+again exist. All that he was doing and thinking, the sleepless nights
+when he called to her in loving appeal, the long hours when he stood
+gazing at her pictures,&mdash;all would be unknown to her. And when he died
+in his turn, the silence and loneliness would be still greater. The
+things which he had been unable to tell her would die with him and they
+would both crumble away in the earth, strangers to each other,
+prolonging their grievous error in eternity, unable to approach each
+other, or see each other, without a saving word, condemned to the
+fearful, unbounded void, over whose limitless firmament passed unnoticed
+the desires and griefs of men.</p>
+
+<p>The unhappy artist walked up and down enraged at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> his impotence. What
+cruelty surrounded them? What dark, hard-hearted, implacable mockery was
+that which drove them toward one another and then separated them
+forever, forever! forbidding them to exchange a look of forgiveness, a
+word to rectify their errors and to permit them to return to their
+eternal sleep with new peace?</p>
+
+<p>Lies&mdash;deceit that hovers about man, like a protecting atmosphere that
+shields him in his path through the void of life. That grave with its
+inscription was a lie; she was not there; it contained merely a few
+remnants, like those of all the others, which no one could recognize,
+not even he, who had loved her so dearly.</p>
+
+<p>His despair made him lift his eyes to the pure, shining sky. Ah, the
+heavens! A lie, too! That heavenly blue with its golden rays and
+fanciful clouds was an imperceptible film, an illusion of the eyes.
+Beyond the deceitful web which wraps the earth was the true heaven,
+endless space, and it was black, ominously obscure, with the sputtering
+spark of burning tears, of infinite worlds, little lamps of eternity in
+whose flame lived other swarms of invisible atoms, and the icy, blind,
+and cruel soul of shadowy space laughed at their passions and longings,
+at the lies they fabricated incessantly to protect their ephemeral
+existence, striving to prolong it with the illusion of an immortal soul.</p>
+
+<p>All were lies which death came to unmask, interrupting men's course on
+the pleasant path of their illusions, throwing them out of it with as
+much indifference as their feet had crushed and driven to flight the
+lines of ants which advanced amid the grass that was sowed with bony
+remains.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales was forced to flee. What was he doing there? What did that
+deserted, empty spot of earth mean to him? Before he went away, with the
+firm determination not to return again, he looked around the grave for
+a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span> flower, a few blades of grass, something to take with him as a
+remembrance. No, Josephina was not there; he was sure, but like a lover,
+he felt that longing, that passionate respect for anything which the
+woman he loves had touched.</p>
+
+<p>He scorned a cluster of wild-flowers which grew in abundance at the foot
+of the grave. He wanted them from near the head and he picked a few
+white buds close to the cross, thinking that perhaps their roots had
+touched her face, that they preserved in their petals something of her
+eyes, of her lips.</p>
+
+<p>He went home downcast and sad, with a void in his mind and death in his
+soul.</p>
+
+<p>But in the warm air of the house, his love came forth to meet him; he
+saw her beside him, smiling from the walls, rising out of the great
+canvases. Renovales felt a warm breath on his face, as if those pictures
+were breathing at once, filling the house with the essence of memories
+which seemed to float in the atmosphere. Everything spoke to him of her,
+everything was filled with that vague perfume of the past. Over there on
+the graveyard hill was the wretched perishable covering. He would not
+return. What was the use? He felt her around him, all that was left of
+her in the world was enclosed in the house, as the strong odor remains
+in a broken, forgotten perfume bottle. No, not in the house. She was in
+him, he felt her presence within him, like those wandering souls of the
+legends who took refuge in another's body, struggling to share the
+dwelling with the soul which was mistress of the body. They had not
+lived in vain so many years together&mdash;at first united by love and
+afterward by habit. For half a lifetime, their bodies had slept in close
+contact, exchanging through their open pores that warmth which is like
+the breath of the soul. She had taken away a part of the artist's life.
+In her remains,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span> crumbling in the lonely cemetery, there was a part of
+the master and he, in turn, felt something strange and mysterious which
+chained him to her memory, which made him always long for that body&mdash;the
+complement of his own&mdash;which had already vanished in the void.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales shut himself up in the house, with a taciturn air and a gloomy
+expression which terrified his valet. If Se&ntilde;or Cotoner came, he was to
+tell him that the master had gone out. If letters came from the
+countess, he could leave them in an old terra-cotta jar in the anteroom,
+where the neglected calling cards were piling up. If it was she who
+came, he was to close the door. He did not want anything to distract
+him. Dinner should be served in the studio.</p>
+
+<p>And he worked alone, without a model, with a tenacity which kept him
+standing before the canvas until it was dark. Sometimes, when the
+servant entered at nightfall, he found the luncheon untouched on the
+table. In the evening the master ate in silence in the dining-room, from
+sheer animal necessity, not seeing what he was eating, his eyes gazing
+into space.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner, somewhat piqued at this unusual r&eacute;gime which prevented him from
+entering the studio, would call in the evening and try in vain to
+interest him with news of the world outside. He observed in the master's
+eyes a strange light, a gleam of insanity.</p>
+
+<p>"How goes the work?"</p>
+
+<p>Renovales answered vaguely. He could see it soon&mdash;in a few days.</p>
+
+<p>His expression of indifference was repeated when he heard the Countess
+of Alberca mentioned. Cotoner described her alarm and astonishment at
+the master's behavior. She had sent for him to find out about Mariano,
+to complain, with tears in her eyes, of his absence. She had twice been
+to the door of his house and had not been<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> able to get in; she
+complained of the servant and that mysterious work. At least he ought to
+write to her, answer her letters, full of tender laments, which she did
+not suspect were lying unopened and neglected in a pile of yellow cards.
+The artist listened to this with a shrug of the shoulders as if he was
+hearing about the sorrows of a distant planet.</p>
+
+<p>"Let's go and see Milita," he said. "There isn't any opera to-night."</p>
+
+<p>In his retirement the only thing which connected him with the outside
+world was his desire to see his daughter, to talk to her, as if he loved
+her with new affection. She was his Josephina's flesh, she had lived in
+her. She was healthy and strong, like him, nothing in her appearance
+reminded him of the other, but her sex bound her closely with the
+beloved image of her mother.</p>
+
+<p>He listened to Milita with smiles of pleasure, grateful for the interest
+she manifested in his health.</p>
+
+<p>"Are you ill, papa? You look poorly. I don't like your appearance. You
+are working too much."</p>
+
+<p>But he calmed her, swinging his strong arms, swelling out his lusty
+chest. He had never felt better. And with the minuteness of a
+good-natured grandfather he inquired about all the little displeasures
+of her life. Her husband spent the day with his friends. She grew tired
+of staying at home and her only amusement was making calls or going
+shopping. And after that came a complaint, always the same, which the
+father divined at her first words. L&oacute;pez de Sosa was selfish, niggardly
+toward her. His spendthrift habits never went beyond his own pleasures
+and his own person; he economized in his wife's expenses. He loved her
+in spite of that. Milita did not venture to deny it; no mistresses or
+unfaithfulness. She would be likely to stand that! But he had no money
+except for his horses and automobiles; she even suspected<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span> that he was
+gambling, and his poor wife lived without a thing to her back, and had
+to weep her requests every time she received a bill, little trifles of a
+thousand pesetas or two.</p>
+
+<p>The father was as generous to her as a lover. He felt like pouring at
+her feet all that he had piled up in long years of labor. She must live
+in happiness, since she loved her husband! Her worries made him smile
+scornfully. Money! Josephina's daughter sad because she needed things,
+when in his house there were so many dirty, insignificant papers which
+he had worked so hard to win and which he now looked at with
+indifference! He always went away from these visits amid hugs and a
+shower of kisses from that big girl who expressed her joy by shaking him
+disrespectfully, as if he were a child.</p>
+
+<p>"Papa, dear, how good you are! How I love you!"</p>
+
+<p>One night as he left his daughter's house with Cotoner, he said
+mysteriously:</p>
+
+<p>"Come in the morning, I will show it to you. It isn't finished but I
+want you to see it. Just you. No one can judge better."</p>
+
+<p>Then he added with the satisfaction of an artist:</p>
+
+<p>"Once I could paint only what I saw. Now I am different. It has cost me
+a good deal, but you shall judge."</p>
+
+<p>And in his voice there was the joy of difficulties overcome, the
+certainty that he had produced a great work.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner came the next day, with the haste of curiosity, and entered the
+studio closed to others.</p>
+
+<p>"Look!" said the master with a proud gesture.</p>
+
+<p>His friend looked. Opposite the window was a canvas on an easel; a
+canvas for the most part gray, and on this, confused, interlaced lines
+revealing some hesitancy over the various contours of a body. At one end
+was a spot of color, to which the master pointed&mdash;a woman's head<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> which
+stood out sharply on the rough background of the cloth.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner stood in silent contemplation. Had the great artist really
+painted that? He did not see the master's hand. Although he was an
+unimportant painter, he had a good eye, and he saw in the canvas
+hesitancy, fear, awkwardness, the struggle with something unreal which
+was beyond his reach, which refused to enter the mold of form. He was
+struck by the lack of likeness, by the forced exaggeration of the
+strokes; the eyes unnaturally large, the tiny mouth, almost a point, the
+bright skin with its supernatural pallor. Only in the pupils of the eyes
+was there something remarkable&mdash;a glance that came from afar, an
+extraordinary light which seemed to pass through the canvas.</p>
+
+<p>"It has cost me a great deal. No work ever made me suffer so. This is
+only the head; the easiest part. The body will come later; a divine
+nude, such as has never been seen. And only you shall see it, only you!"</p>
+
+<p>The Bohemian no longer looked at the picture. He was gazing at the
+master, astonished at the work, disconcerted by its mystery.</p>
+
+<p>"You see, without a model. Without the real before me," continued the
+master. "<i>They</i> were all the guide I had; but it is my best, my supreme
+work."</p>
+
+<p><i>They</i> were all the portraits of the dead woman, taken down from the
+walls and placed on easels or chairs in a close circle around the
+canvas.</p>
+
+<p>His friend could not contain his astonishment, he could not pretend any
+longer, overcome by surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but it is&mdash;&mdash; But you have been trying to paint Josephina!"</p>
+
+<p>Renovales started back violently.</p>
+
+<p>"Josephina, yes. Who else should it be? Where are your eyes?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And his angry glance flashed at Cotoner.</p>
+
+<p>The latter looked at the head again. Yes, it was she, with a beauty that
+was not of this world,&mdash;uncanny, spiritualized, as if it belonged to a
+new humanity, free from coarse necessities, in which the last traces of
+animal descent have died out. He gazed at the numerous portraits of
+other times and recognized parts of them in the new work, but animated
+by a light which came from within and changed the value of the colors,
+giving to the face a strange unfamiliarity.</p>
+
+<p>"You recognize her at last!" said the master, anxiously following the
+impressions of his work in the eyes of his friend. "Is it she? Tell me,
+don't you think it is like her?"</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner lied compassionately. Yes, it was she, at last he saw her well
+enough. She, but more beautiful than in life. Josephina had never looked
+like that.</p>
+
+<p>Now it was Renovales who looked with surprise and pity. Poor Cotoner!
+Unhappy failure&mdash;pariah of art, who could not rise above the nameless
+crowd and whose only feeling was in his stomach! What did he know about
+such things? What was the use of asking his opinion?</p>
+
+<p>He had not recognized Josephina, and nevertheless this canvas was his
+best portrait, the most exact.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales bore her within him, he saw her merely by retiring into his
+thoughts. No one could know her better than he. The rest had forgotten
+her. That was the way he saw her and that was what she had been.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="IVb" id="IVb"></a>IV</h2>
+
+
+<p>The Countess of Alberca succeeded in making her way, one afternoon, to
+the master's studio.</p>
+
+<p>The servant saw her arrive as usual in a cab, cross the garden, come up
+the steps, and enter the reception room with the hasty step of a
+resolute woman who goes straight ahead without hesitating. He tried to
+block her way respectfully, going from side to side, meeting her every
+time she started to one side to pass this obstacle. The master was
+working! The master was not receiving callers! It was a strict order; he
+could not make an exception! But she continued ahead with a frown, a
+flash of cold wrath in her eyes, an evident determination to strike down
+the servant, if it was necessary, and to pass over his body.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, my good man, get out of the way."</p>
+
+<p>And her haughty, irritated accent made the poor servant tremble and at a
+loss to stop this invasion of rustling skirts and strong perfumes. In
+one of her evolutions the fair lady ran into an Italian mosaic table, on
+the center of which was the old jar. Her glance fell instinctively to
+the bottom of the jar.</p>
+
+<p>It was only an instant, but enough for her woman's curiosity to
+recognize the blue envelopes with white borders, whose sealed ends stuck
+out, untouched, from the pile of cards. The last straw! Her paleness
+grew intense, almost greenish, and she started forward with such a rush
+that the servant could not stop her and was left behind her, dejected,
+confused, fearful of his master's wrath.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Renovales, alarmed by the sharp click of heels on the hard floor, and
+the rustling of skirts, turned toward the door just as the countess made
+her entrance with a dramatic expression.</p>
+
+<p>"It's me."</p>
+
+<p>"You? You, dear?"</p>
+
+<p>Excitement, surprise, fear made the master stammer.</p>
+
+<p>"Sit down," he said coldly.</p>
+
+<p>She sat down on a couch and the artist remained standing in front of
+her.</p>
+
+<p>They looked at each other as if they did not recognize each other after
+this absence of weeks which weighed on their memories as if it were of
+years.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales looked at her coldly, without the least tremble of desire, as
+if it were an ordinary visitor whom he must get rid of as soon as
+possible. He was surprised at her greenish pallor, at her mouth, drawn
+with irritation, at her hard eyes which flashed yellow flames, at her
+nose which curved down to her upper lip. She was angry, but when her
+eyes fell on him, they lost their hardness.</p>
+
+<p>Her woman's instinct was calmed when she gazed at him. He, too, looked
+different in the carelessness of the seclusion; his hair tangled,
+revealing the preoccupation, the fixed, absorbing idea, which made him
+neglect the neatness of his person.</p>
+
+<p>Her jealousy vanished instantly, her cruel suspicion that she would
+surprise him in love with another woman, with the fickleness of an
+artist. She knew the external evidence of love, the necessity a man
+feels of making himself attractive, refining the care of his dress.</p>
+
+<p>She surveyed his neglect with satisfaction, noticing his dirty clothes,
+his long fingernails, stained with paint, all the details which revealed
+lack of tidiness, forgetfulness of his person. No doubt it was a passing
+artist's<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> whim, a craze for work, but they did not reveal what she had
+suspected.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of this calming certainty, as Concha was ready to shed the
+tears which were all prepared, waiting impatiently on the edge of her
+eyelids, she raised her hands to her eyes, curling up on one end of the
+couch, with a tragic expression. She was very unhappy; she was suffering
+terribly. She had passed several horrible weeks. What was the matter?
+Why had he disappeared without a word of explanation, when she loved him
+more than ever, when she was ready to give up everything, to cause a
+perfect scandal, by coming to live with him, as his companion, his
+slave? And her letters, her poor letters, neglected, unopened, as if
+they were annoying requests for alms. She had spent the nights awake,
+putting her whole soul into their pages! And in her accent there was a
+tremble of literary pique, of bitterness, that all the pretty things,
+which she wrote down with a smile of satisfaction after long reflection,
+remained unknown. Men! Their selfishness and cruelty! How stupid women
+were to worship them!</p>
+
+<p>She continued to weep and Renovales looked at her as if she were another
+woman. She seemed ridiculous to him in that grief, which distorted her
+face, which made her ugly, destroying her smiling, doll-like
+impassibility.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to offer excuses, that he might not seem cruel by keeping
+silent, but they lacked warmth and the desire to carry conviction. He
+was working hard; it was time for him to return to his former life of
+creative activity. She forgot that he was an artist, a master of some
+reputation, who had his duty to the public. He was not like those young
+fops who could devote the whole day to her and pass their life at her
+feet, like enamored pages.</p>
+
+<p>"We must be serious, Concha," he added with pedantic coldness. "Life is
+not play. I must work and I am<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span> working. I haven't been out of here for
+I don't know how many days."</p>
+
+<p>She stood up angrily, took her hands from her eyes, looked at him,
+rebuking him. He lied; he had been out and it had never occurred to him
+to come to her house for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Just to say 'Good morning,' nothing more. So that I may see you for an
+instant, Mariano, long enough to be sure that you are the same, that you
+still love me. But you have gone out often; you have been seen. I have
+my detectives who tell me everything. You are too well known to pass
+unnoticed. You have been in the Museo del Prado mornings. You have been
+seen gazing at a picture of Goya's, a nude, for hours at a time, like an
+idiot. Your hobby is coming back again, Mariano! And it hasn't occurred
+to you to come and see me; you haven't answered my letters. You feel
+proud, it seems, content with being loved, and submit to being worshiped
+like an idol, certain that the more uncivil you are, the more you will
+be loved. Oh, these men! These artists!"</p>
+
+<p>She sobbed, but her voice no longer preserved the irritated tone of the
+first few moments. The certainty that she did not have to struggle with
+the influence of another woman softened her pride, leaving in her only
+the gentle complaint of a victim who is eager to sacrifice herself anew.</p>
+
+<p>"But sit down," she exclaimed amid her sobs, pointing to a place on the
+couch beside her. "Don't stand up. You look as if you wanted me to go
+away."</p>
+
+<p>The painter sat down timidly, taking care not to touch her, avoiding
+those hands which reached out to him, longing for a pretext to seize
+him. He saw her desire to weep on his shoulder, to forget everything,
+and to banish her last tears with a smile. That was what always
+happened, but Renovales, knowing the game, drew back<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span> roughly. That must
+not begin again; it could, not be repeated, even if he wanted to. He
+must tell her the truth at any cost, end it forever, throw off the
+burden from his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>He spoke hoarsely, stammering, with his eyes on the floor, not daring to
+lift them for fear of meeting Concha's which he felt were fixed upon
+him.</p>
+
+<p>For several days he had been meaning to write to her. He had been afraid
+that he might not express his ideas clearly and so he had put off the
+letter until the next day. Now he was glad she had come; he rejoiced at
+the weakness of his valet, in letting her enter.</p>
+
+<p>They must talk like good comrades who examine the future together. It
+was time to put an end to their folly. They would be what Concha once
+desired, friends&mdash;good friends. She was beautiful; she still had the
+freshness of youth, but time leaves its mark, and he felt that he was
+getting old; he looked at life from a height, as we look at the water of
+a stream, without dipping into it.</p>
+
+<p>Concha listened to him in astonishment, refusing to understand his
+words. What did these scruples mean? After some digressions, the painter
+spoke remorsefully of his friend, the Count of Alberca, a man whom he
+respected for his very guilelessness. His conscience rose in protest at
+the simple admiration of the good man. This daring deceit in his own
+house, under his own roof, was infamous. He could not go on; they must
+purify themselves from the past by being good friends, must say good-by
+as lovers, without spite or antipathy, grateful to each other for the
+happy past, taking with them, like dead lovers, their pleasant memories.</p>
+
+<p>Concha's laugh, nervous, sarcastic, insolent, interrupted the artist.
+Her cruel spirit of fun was aroused at the thought that her husband was
+the pretext of this break. Her husband! And once more she began to laugh
+up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span>roariously, revealing the count's insignificance, the absolute lack
+of respect which he inspired in his wife, or her habit of adjusting her
+life as her fancy dictated, with never a thought of what that man might
+say or think. Her husband did not exist for her; she never feared him;
+she had never thought that he might serve as an obstacle, and yet her
+lover spoke of him, presented <i>him</i> as a justification for leaving her!</p>
+
+<p>"My husband!" she repeated amid the peals of her cruel laughter. "Poor
+thing! Leave him in peace; he has nothing to do with us. Don't lie;
+don't be a coward. Speak. You've something else on your mind. I don't
+know what it is; but I have a presentiment, I see it from here. If you
+loved another woman! If you loved another woman!"</p>
+
+<p>But she broke off this threatening exclamation. She needed only to look
+at him to be convinced that it was impossible. His body was not perfumed
+with love; everything about him revealed calm peace, without interests
+or desires. Perhaps it was a whim of his fancy, some unbalanced caprice
+which led him to repel her. And encouraged by this belief, she relaxed,
+forgetting her anger, speaking to him affectionately, caressing him with
+a fervor in which there was something at once of the mother and of the
+mistress.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales suddenly saw her beside him with her arms around his neck,
+burying her hands in his tangled hair.</p>
+
+<p>She was not proud; men worshiped her, but her heart, her body, all of
+her belonged to the master, the ungrateful brute, who returned so ill
+her affection that she was getting old with her trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly filled with tenderness, she kissed his forehead generously and
+purely. Poor boy! He was working so hard! The only thing the matter was
+that he was tired out, distracted with too much painting. He must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> leave
+his brushes alone, live, love her, be happy, rest his wrinkled forehead
+behind which, like a curtain, an invisible world passed and repassed in
+perpetual revolution.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me kiss your pretty forehead again, so that the hobgoblins within
+may be silent and sleep."</p>
+
+<p>And she kissed once more his <i>pretty</i> forehead, delighting in caressing
+with her lips the furrows and prominences of its irregular surface,
+rough as volcanic ground.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time her wheedling voice, with an exaggerated childish lisp,
+sounded in the silence of the studio. She was jealous of painting, the
+cruel mistress, exacting and repugnant, who seemed to drive her poor
+baby mad. One of these days, master, the studio would catch on fire
+together with all its pictures. She tried to draw him to her, to make
+him sit on her lap, so that she might rock him like a child.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Mariano, dear. Laugh for your Concha. Laugh, you big stupid!
+Laugh, or I'll whip you."</p>
+
+<p>He laughed, but it was forced. He tried to resist her fondling, tired of
+those childish tricks which once were his delight. He remained
+indifferent to those hands, those lips, to the warmth of that body which
+rubbed against him without awakening the least desire. And he had loved
+that woman! For her he had committed the terrible, irreparable crime
+which would make him drag the chain of remorse forever! What surprises
+life has in store!</p>
+
+<p>The painter's coldness finally had its effect on the Alberca woman. She
+seemed to awaken from the dream, in which she was lulling herself. She
+drew back from her lover, and looked at him fixedly with imperious eyes,
+in which a spark of pride was once more beginning to flash.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Say that you love me! Say it at once! I need it!"</p>
+
+<p>But in vain did she show her authority; in vain she brought her eyes
+close to him, as if she wished to look within him. The artist smiled
+faintly, murmured evasive words, refused to comply with her demands.</p>
+
+<p>"Say it out loud, so that I can hear it. Say that you love me. Call me
+Phryne, as you used to when you worshiped me on your knees, kissing my
+body!"</p>
+
+<p>He said nothing. He hung his head in shame at the memory, so as not to
+see her.</p>
+
+<p>The countess stood up nervously. In her anger, she drew back to the
+middle of the studio, her hands clenched, her lips quivering, her eyes
+flashing. She wanted to destroy something, to fall on the floor in a
+convulsion. She hesitated whether to break an Arabic amphora close by,
+or to fall on that bowed head and scratch it with her nails. Wretch! She
+had loved him so dearly; she still cared for him so, feeling bound to
+him by both vanity and habit!</p>
+
+<p>"Say whether you love me," she cried. "Say it once and for all! Yes or
+no?"</p>
+
+<p>Still she obtained no answer. The silence was trying. Once more she
+believed there was another love, a woman who had come to occupy her
+place. But who was it? Where could he have found her? Her woman's
+instinct made her turn her head and glance into the next studio and
+beyond into the last, the real workshop of the master. Warned by a
+mysterious intuition, she started to run toward it. There! Perhaps
+there! The painter's steps sounded behind her. He had started from his
+dejection when he saw her fleeing; he followed her in a frenzy of fear.
+Concha foresaw that she was going to know the truth; a cruel truth with
+all the crudeness of a discovery in broad daylight. She stopped,
+scowling with a mental effort before that portrait which seemed to
+domi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span>nate the studio, occupying the best easel, in the most advantageous
+position, in spite of the solitary gray of its canvas.</p>
+
+<p>The master saw in Concha's face the same expression of doubt and
+surprise which he had seen in Cotoner's. Who was that? But the
+hesitation was shorter; her woman's pride sharpened her senses. She saw
+beyond that unrecognizable head the circle of older portraits which
+seemed to guard it.</p>
+
+<p>Ah! The immense surprise in her eyes; the cold astonishment in the
+glance she fixed on the painter as she surveyed him from head to foot!</p>
+
+<p>"Is it Josephina?"</p>
+
+<p>He bowed his head in mute assent. But his silence seemed to him
+cowardly; he felt that he must cry out in the presence of those
+canvases, what he had not dared to say outside. It was a longing to
+flatter the dead woman, to implore her forgiveness, by confessing his
+hopeless love.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it is Josephina."</p>
+
+<p>And he said it with spirit, going forward a step, looking at Concha as
+if she were an enemy, with a sort of hostility in his eyes which did not
+escape her notice.</p>
+
+<p>They did not say anything more. The countess could not speak. Her
+surprise passed the limits of the probable, the known.</p>
+
+<p>In love with his wife,&mdash;and after she was dead! Shut up like a hermit in
+order to paint her with a beauty which she had never had. Life brings
+surprises, but this surely had never been seen before.</p>
+
+<p>She felt as if she were falling, falling, driven by astonishment and, at
+the end of the fall, she found that she was changed, without a complaint
+or pang of grief. Everything about her seemed strange&mdash;the room, the
+man, the pictures. This whole affair went beyond her power of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span>
+conception. Had she found a woman there, it would have made her weep and
+shriek with grief, roll on the floor, love the master still more with
+the stimulus of jealousy. But to find that her rival was a dead woman!
+And more than that&mdash;his wife! It seemed supremely ridiculous, she felt a
+mad desire to laugh. But she did not laugh. She recalled the unusual
+expression she had noticed on the master's face, when she entered the
+studio; she thought that now she saw in his eyes a spark of that same
+gleam.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly she felt afraid; afraid of the man who looked at her in silence
+as if he did not know her and toward whom she felt the same strangeness.</p>
+
+<p>Still she had for him a glance of sympathy, of that tenderness which
+every woman feels in the presence of unhappiness, even if it afflicts a
+stranger. Poor Mariano! All was over between them; she took care not to
+speak intimately to him; she held out her gloved hand with the gesture
+of an unapproachable lady. For a long time they stood in this position,
+speaking only with their eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Good-by, master; take care of yourself! Don't bother to come with me. I
+know the way. Go on with your work. Paint&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Her heels clicked nervously on the waxed floor as she left the room,
+which she was never to enter again. The swish of her skirts scattered
+their wake of perfumes in the studio for the last time.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales breathed more freely when he was left alone. He had ended
+forever the error of his life. The only thing in this visit that left a
+sting was the countess's hesitation before the portrait. She had
+recognized it sooner than Cotoner, but she too had hesitated. No one
+remembered Josephina; he alone kept her image.</p>
+
+<p>That same afternoon, before his old friend came, the master received
+another call. His daughter appeared in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> the studio. Renovates had
+divined that it was she before she entered, by the whirl of joy and
+overflowing life which seemed to precede her.</p>
+
+<p>She had come to see him; she had promised him a visit months ago. And
+her father smiled indulgently, recalling some of her complaints when he
+last visited her. Just to see him?</p>
+
+<p>Milita pretended to be absorbed in examining the studio which she had
+not entered for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>"Look!" she exclaimed. "Why, it's mamma!"</p>
+
+<p>She looked at the picture with astonishment, but the master seemed
+pleased at the readiness with which she had recognized her. At last, his
+daughter! The instinct of blood! The poor master did not see the hasty
+glance at the other portraits which had guided the girl in her
+induction.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you like it? Is it she?" he asked as anxiously as a novice.</p>
+
+<p>Milita answered rather vaguely. Yes, it was good; perhaps a little more
+beautiful than she was. She never knew her like that.</p>
+
+<p>"That is true," said the master, "You never saw her in her good days.
+But she was like that before you were born. Your poor mother was very
+beautiful."</p>
+
+<p>But his daughter did not manifest any great enthusiasm over the picture.
+It seemed strange to her. Why was the head at one end of the canvas?
+What was he going to add? What did those lines mean? The master tried to
+explain, almost blushing, afraid to tell his intention to his daughter,
+suddenly overcome by paternal modesty. He was not sure as yet what he
+would do; he had to decide on a dress to suit her. And in a sudden
+access of tenderness, his eyes grew moist and he kissed his daughter.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember her well, Milita? She was very good, wasn't she?"</p>
+
+<p>His daughter felt infected by her father's sadness, but only for a
+moment. Her strength, health and joy of life soon threw off these sad
+impressions. Yes, very good. She often thought about her. Perhaps she
+spoke the truth; but these memories were not deep nor painful. Death
+seemed to her a thing without meaning, a remote incident without much
+terror which did not disturb the serene calm of her physical perfection.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor mamma," she added in a forced tone. "It was a relief for her to
+go. Always sick, always sad! With such a life it is better to die!"</p>
+
+<p>In her words there was a trace of bitterness, the memory of her youth,
+spent with that touchy invalid, in an atmosphere made the more
+unpleasant by the hostile chill with which her parents treated each
+other. Besides, her expression was icy. We all must die. The weak must
+go first and leave their place to the strong. It was the unconscious,
+cruel selfishness of health. Renovales suddenly saw his daughter's soul
+through this rent of frankness. The dead woman had known them both. The
+daughter was his, wholly his. He, too, possessed that selfishness in his
+strength which had made him crush weakness and delicacy placed under his
+protection. Poor Josephina had only him left, repentant and adoring. For
+the other people, she had not passed through the world; not even his
+daughter felt any lasting sorrow at her death.</p>
+
+<p>Milita turned her back to the portrait. She forgot her mother and her
+father's work. An artist's hobby! She had come for something else.</p>
+
+<p>She sat down beside him, almost in the same way that another woman had
+sat down, a few hours before. She coaxed him with her rich voice, which
+took on a sort of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span> cat-like purring. Papa,&mdash;papa, dear,&mdash;she was very
+unhappy. She came to see him, to tell him her troubles.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, money," said the master, somewhat annoyed at the indifference with
+which she had spoken of her mother.</p>
+
+<p>"Money, papa, you've said it; I told you the other day. But that isn't
+all. Rafael&mdash;my husband&mdash;I can't stand this sort of life."</p>
+
+<p>And she related all the petty trials of her existence. In order not to
+feel that she was prematurely a widow, she had to go with her husband in
+his automobile and show an interest in his trips which once had amused
+her but now were growing unbearable.</p>
+
+<p>"It's the life of a section-hand, papa, always swallowing dust and
+counting kilometers. When I love Madrid so much! When I can't live out
+of it!"</p>
+
+<p>She had sat down on her father's knees, she talked to him, looking into
+his eyes, smoothing his hair, pulling his mustache, like a mischievous
+child,&mdash;almost as the other had.</p>
+
+<p>"Besides, he's stingy; if he had his way, I'd look like a frump. He
+thinks everything is too much. Papa, help me out of this difficulty,
+it's only two thousand pesetas. With that I can get on my feet and then
+I won't bother you with any more loans. Come, that's a dear papa. I need
+them right away, because I waited till the last minute, so as not to
+inconvenience you."</p>
+
+<p>Renovales moved about uneasily under the weight of his daughter, a
+strapping girl who fell on him like a child. Her filial confidences
+annoyed him. Her perfume made him think of that other perfume, which
+disturbed his nights, spreading through the solitude of the rooms. She
+seemed to have inherited her mother's flesh.</p>
+
+<p>He pushed her away roughly, and she took this movement for a refusal.
+Her face grew sad, tears came to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> her eyes, and her father repented his
+brusqueness. He was surprised at her constant requests for money. What
+did she want it for? He recalled the wedding-presents, that princely
+abundance of clothes and jewels which had been on exhibition in this
+very room. What did she need? But Milita looked at her father in
+astonishment. More than a year had gone by since then. It was clear
+enough that her father was ignorant in such matters. Was she going to
+wear the same gowns, the same hats, the same ornaments for an endless
+length of time, more than twelve months? Horrible! That was too
+commonplace. And overcome at the thought of such a monstrosity, she
+began to shed her tender tears to the great disturbance of the master.</p>
+
+<p>"There, there, Milita, there's no use in crying. What do you want?
+Money? I'll send you all you need to-morrow. I haven't much at the
+house. I shall have to get it at the bank&mdash;operations you don't
+understand."</p>
+
+<p>But Milita, encouraged by her victory, insisted on her request with
+desperate obstinacy. He was deceiving her; he would not remember it the
+next day; she knew her father. Besides, she needed the money at
+once,&mdash;her honor was at stake (she declared it seriously) if her friends
+discovered that she was in debt.</p>
+
+<p>"This very minute, papa. Don't be horrid. Don't amuse yourself by making
+me worry. You must have money, lots of it, perhaps you have it on you.
+Let's see, you naughty papa, let me search your pockets, let me look at
+your wallet. Don't say no; you have it with you. You have it with you!"</p>
+
+<p>She plunged her hands in her father's breast, unbuttoning his working
+jacket, tickling him to get at the inside pocket. Renovales resisted
+feebly. "You foolish girl. You're wasting your time. Where do you think
+the wallet is? I never carry it in this suit."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"It's here, you fibber," his daughter cried merrily, persisting in her
+search. "I feel it! I have it! Look at it!"</p>
+
+<p>She was right. The painter had forgotten that he had picked it up that
+morning to pay a bill and then had put it absent-mindedly in the pocket
+of his serge coat.</p>
+
+<p>Milita opened it with a greediness that hurt her father. Oh, those
+woman's hands, trembling in the search for money! He grew calmer when he
+thought of the fortune he had amassed, of the different colored papers
+which he kept in his desk. All would be his daughter's and perhaps this
+would save her from the danger toward which her longing to live amid the
+vanities and tinsel of feminine slavery was leading her.</p>
+
+<p>In an instant she had her hands on a number of bills of different
+denominations, forming a roll which she squeezed tight between her
+fingers.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales protested.</p>
+
+<p>"Let me have it, Milita, don't be childish. You're leaving me without a
+cent. I'll send it to you to-morrow; give it up now. It's robbery."</p>
+
+<p>She avoided him; she had stood up; she kept at a distance, raising her
+hand above her hat to save her booty. She laughed boisterously at her
+trick. She did not mean to give him back a single one! She did not know
+how many there were, she would count them at home, she would be out of
+difficulty for the nonce, and the next day she would ask him for what
+was lacking.</p>
+
+<p>The master finally began to laugh, finding her merriment contagious. He
+chased Milita without trying to catch her; he threatened her with mock
+severity, called her a robber, shouting "help," and so they ran from one
+studio to another. Before she disappeared, Milita stopped on the last
+doorsill, raising her gloved finger authoritatively:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow, the rest. You mustn't forget. Really, papa, this is very
+important. Good-by; I shall expect you to-morrow."</p>
+
+<p>And she disappeared, leaving in her father some of the merriment with
+which they had chased each other.</p>
+
+<p>The twilight was gloomy. Renovales sat in front of his wife's portrait,
+gazing at that extravagantly beautiful head which seemed to him the most
+faithful of his portraits. His thoughts were lost in the shadow which
+rose from the corners and enveloped the canvases. Only on the windows
+trembled a pale, hazy light, cut across by the black lines of the
+branches outside.</p>
+
+<p>Alone&mdash;alone forever. He had the affection of that big girl who had just
+gone away, merry, indifferent to everything which did not flatter her
+youthful vanity, her healthy beauty. He had the devotion of his friend
+Cotoner, who, like an old dog, could not live without seeing him, but
+was incapable of wholly devoting his life to him, and shared it between
+him and other friends, jealous of his Bohemian freedom.</p>
+
+<p>And that was all. Very little.</p>
+
+<p>On the verge of old age, he gazed at a cruel, reddish light which seemed
+to irritate his eyes; the solitary, monotonous road which awaited
+him&mdash;and at the end, death! No one was ignorant of that; it was the only
+certainty, and still he had spent the greater part of his life without
+thinking of it, without seeing it.</p>
+
+<p>It was like one of those epidemics in distant lands which destroy
+millions of lives. People talk of it as of a definite fact, but without
+a start of horror, or a tremble of fear. "It is too far away; it will
+take it a long time to reach us."</p>
+
+<p>He had often named Death, but with his lips; his thoughts had not
+grasped the meaning of the word, feel<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span>ing that he was alive, bound to
+life by his dreams and desires.</p>
+
+<p>Death stood at the end of the road; no one could avoid meeting it, but
+all are long in seeing it. Ambition, desire, love, the cruel animal
+needs distracted man in his course toward it; they were like the woods,
+valleys, blue sky and winding crystal streams which diverted the
+traveler, hiding the boundary of the landscape, the fatal goal, the
+black bottomless gorge to which all roads lead.</p>
+
+<p>He was on the last days' march. The path of his life was growing
+desolate and gloomy; the vegetation was dwindling; the great groves
+diminished into sparse, miserable lichens. From the murky abyss came an
+icy breath; he saw it in the distance, he walked without escape toward
+its gorge. The fields of dreams with their sunlit heights which once
+bounded the horizon, were left behind and it was impossible to return.
+In this path no one retraced his steps.</p>
+
+<p>He had wasted half his life, struggling for wealth and fame, hoping
+sometimes to receive their revenues in the pleasures of love. Die! Who
+thought of that? Then it was a remote, unmeaning threat. He believed
+that he was provided with a mission by Providence. Death would take no
+liberties with him, would not come till his work was finished. He still
+had many things to do. Well, all was done now; human desires did not
+exist for him. He had everything. No longer did fanciful towers rise
+before his steps, for him to assault. On the horizon, free from
+obstacles, appeared the great forgotten,&mdash;Death.</p>
+
+<p>He did not want to see it. There was still a long journey on that road
+which might grow longer and longer, according to the strength of the
+traveler, and his legs were still strong.</p>
+
+<p>But, ah, to walk, walk, year after year, with his gaze fixed on that
+murky abyss, contemplating it always at<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> the edge of the horizon, unable
+to escape for an instant the certainty that it was there, was a
+superhuman torture which would force him to hurry his steps, to run in
+order to reach the end as soon as possible. Oh, for deceitful clouds
+which might veil the horizon, concealing the reality which embitters our
+bread, which casts its shadows over our souls and makes us curse the
+futility of our birth! Oh, for lying, pleasant illusions to make a
+paradise rise from the desert shadows of the last journey! Oh, for
+dreams!</p>
+
+<p>And in his mind the poor master enlarged the last fancy of his desire;
+he connected with the beloved likeness of his dead wife all the flights
+of his imagination, longing to infuse into it new life with a part of
+his own. He piled up by handfuls the clay of the past, the mass of
+memory, to make it greater that it might occupy the whole way, shut off
+the horizon like a huge hill, hide till the last moment the murky abyss
+which ended the journey.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="Vb" id="Vb"></a>V</h2>
+
+
+<p>Renovales' behavior was a source of surprise and even scandal for all
+his friends.</p>
+
+<p>The Countess of Alberca took especial care to let every one know that
+her only relation with the painter was a friendship which grew
+constantly colder and more formal.</p>
+
+<p>"He's crazy," she said. "He's finished. There's nothing left of him but
+a memory of what he once was."</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner in his unswerving friendship was indignant at hearing such
+comment on the famous master.</p>
+
+<p>"He isn't drinking. All that people say about him is a lie; the usual
+legend about a celebrated man."</p>
+
+<p>He had his own ideas about Mariano; he knew his longing for a stirring
+life, his desire to imitate the habits of youth in the prime of life,
+with a thirst for all the mysteries which he fancied were hidden in this
+evil life, of which he had heard without ever daring till then to join
+in them.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner accepted the master's new habits indulgently. Poor fellow!</p>
+
+<p>"You are putting into action the pictures of 'The Rake's Progress,'" he
+said to his friend. "You're going the way of all virtuous men when they
+cease to be so, on the verge of old age. You are making a fool of
+yourself, Mariano."</p>
+
+<p>But his loyalty led him to acquiesce in the new life of the master. At
+last he had given in to his requests and had come to live with him. With
+his few pieces of luggage he occupied a room in the house and cared for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span>
+Renovales with almost paternal solicitude. The Bohemian showed great
+sympathy for him. It was the same old story: "He who does not do it at
+the beginning does it at the end," and Renovales, after a life of hard
+work, was rushing into a life of dissipation with the blindness of a
+youth, admiring vulgar pleasures, clothing them with the most fanciful
+seductions.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner frequently harassed him with complaints. What had he brought him
+to live at his house for? He deserted him for days at a time; he wanted
+to go out alone; he left him at home like a trusty steward. The old
+Bohemian posted himself minutely on his life. Often the students in the
+Art School, gathered at nightfall beside the entrance to the Academy,
+saw him going down the Calle de Alcal&aacute;, muffled in his cloak with an
+affected air of mystery that attracted attention.</p>
+
+<p>"There goes Renovales. That one, the one in the cloak."</p>
+
+<p>And they followed him out of curiosity&mdash;in his comings and goings
+through the broad street where he circled about like a silent dove as if
+he were waiting for something. Sometimes, no doubt tired of these
+evolutions, he went into a caf&eacute; and the curious admirers followed him,
+pressing their faces against the window-panes. They saw him drop into a
+chair, looking vaguely at the glass before him; always the same thing:
+brandy. Suddenly he would drink it at one gulp, pay the waiter and go
+out, with the haste of one who has swallowed a drug. And once more he
+would begin his explorations, peering with greedy eyes at all the women
+who passed alone, turning around to follow the course of run-down heels,
+the flutter of dark and mud-splashed skirts. At last he would start with
+sudden determination, he would disappear almost on the heel of some
+woman always of the same appearance. The boys knew the great artist's
+preference: little,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> weak, sickly women, graceful as faded flowers, with
+large eyes, dull and sorrowful.</p>
+
+<p>A story of strange mental aberration was forming about him. His enemies
+repeated it in the studios; the throng which cannot imagine that
+celebrated men lead the same life as other people, and like to think
+that they are capricious, tormented by extraordinary habits, began to
+talk with delight about the hobby of the painter Renovales.</p>
+
+<p>In all the houses of prostitution, from the middle class apartments,
+scattered in the most respectable streets, to the damp, ill-smelling
+dens which cast out their wares at night on the Calle de Peligros,
+circulated the story of a certain gentleman, provoking shouts of
+laughter. He always came muffled up mysteriously, following hastily the
+rustle of some poor starched skirts which preceded him. He entered the
+dark doorway with a sort of terror, climbed the winding staircase which
+seemed to smell of the residues of life, hastened the disrobing with
+eager hands, as if he had no time to waste, as if he was afraid of dying
+before he realized his desire, and all at once the poor women who looked
+askance at his feverish silence and the savage hunger which shone in his
+eyes, were tempted to laugh, seeing him drop dejectedly into a chair in
+silence, unmindful of the brutal words which they in their astonishment
+hurled at him; without paying any attention to their gestures and
+invitations, not coming out of his stupor till the woman, cold and
+somewhat offended, started to put on her clothes. "One moment more."
+This scene almost always ended with an expression of disgust, of bitter
+disappointment. Sometimes the poor puppets of flesh thought they saw in
+his eyes a sorrowful expression, as if he were going to weep. Then he
+fled precipitously, hidden under his cloak in sudden shame, with the
+firm determination not to return, to resist<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span> that demon of hungry
+curiosity which dwelt within him and could not see a woman's form in the
+street, without feeling a violent desire to disrobe it.</p>
+
+<p>These stories came to Cotoner's ears. Mariano! Mariano! He did not dare
+to rebuke him openly for these shameful nocturnal adventures; he was
+afraid of a violent explosion of anger on the part of the master. He
+must direct him prudently. But what most aroused his old friend's
+censure was the people with whom the artist associated.</p>
+
+<p>This false rejuvenation made him seek the company of the younger men and
+Cotoner cursed roundly when at the close of the theater he found him in
+a caf&eacute;, surrounded by his new comrades, all of whom might be his sons.
+Most of them were painters, novices, some with considerable talent,
+others whose only merit was their evil tongue, all of them proud of
+their friendship with the famous man, delighting like pigmies in
+treating him as an equal, jesting over his weaknesses. Great Heavens!
+Some of the bolder even went so far as to call him by his first name,
+treating him like a glorious failure, presuming to make comparisons
+between his paintings and what they would do when they could. "Mariano,
+art moves in different paths, now."</p>
+
+<p>"Aren't you ashamed of yourself!" Cotoner would exclaim. "You look like
+a schoolmaster surrounded by children. You ought to be spanked. A man
+like you tolerating the insolence of those shabby fellows!"</p>
+
+<p>Renovales' good nature was unshaken. They were very interesting; they
+amused him; he found in them the joy of youth. They went together to the
+theaters and music halls, they knew women; they knew where the good
+models were; with them he could enter many places where he would not
+venture to go alone. His years and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> ugliness passed unnoticed amid that
+youthful merry crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"They are of service to me," the poor man said with a sly wink. "I am
+amused and they tell me lots of things. Besides, this isn't Rome; there
+are hardly any models; it is very difficult to find them and these boys
+are my guides."</p>
+
+<p>And he went on to speak of his great artistic plans, of that picture of
+Phryne, with her divine nakedness, which had once more risen in his
+mind, of the beloved portrait which was still in the same condition as
+his brush had left it when he finished the head.</p>
+
+<p>He was not working. His old energy, which had made painting a necessary
+element in his life, now found vent in words, in the desire to see
+everything, to know "new phases of life."</p>
+
+<p>Soldevilla, his favorite pupil, found himself a target for the master's
+questions when he appeared at rare intervals in the studio.</p>
+
+<p>"You must know good women, Soldevilla: You have been around a great deal
+in spite of that angel face of yours. You must take me with you. You
+must introduce me."</p>
+
+<p>"Master!" the youth would exclaim in surprise, "it isn't yet six months
+since I was married! I never go out at night! How you joke!"</p>
+
+<p>Renovates answered with a scornful glance. A fine life! No youth, no
+joy! He spent all his money on variegated waistcoats and high collars.
+What a perfect ant! He had married a rich woman, since he couldn't catch
+the master's daughter. Besides, he was an ungrateful scamp. Now he was
+joining the master's enemies, convinced that he could get nothing more
+out of him. He scorned him. It was too bad that his protection had
+caused him so much inconvenience! He was no artist.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And the master went back with new affection to his companions, those
+merry youths, slandering and disrespectful as they were. He recognized
+talent in them all.</p>
+
+<p>The gossip about his extraordinary life reached even his daughter, with
+the rapid spread which anything prejudicial to a famous man acquires.</p>
+
+<p>Milita scowled, trying to restrain the laughter which the strangeness of
+this change aroused. Her father becoming a rake!</p>
+
+<p>"Papa! Papa!" she exclaimed in a comic tone of reproach.</p>
+
+<p>And papa made excuses like a naughty, hypocritical little boy,
+increasing by his perturbation his daughter's desire to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>L&oacute;pez de Sosa seemed inclined to be indulgent toward his father-in-law.
+Poor old gentleman! All his life working, with a sick wife, who was very
+good and kind, to be sure, but who had embittered his life! She did well
+to die, and the artist did quite as well in making up for the time he
+had lost.</p>
+
+<p>With the instinctive freemasonry of all those who lead an easy, merry
+life, the sport defended his father-in-law, supported him, found him
+more attractive, more congenial, as a result of his new habits. A man
+must not always stay shut up in his studio with the irritated air of a
+prophet, talking about things which nobody would understand.</p>
+
+<p>They met each other in the evening during the last acts at the theaters
+and music halls, when the songs and dances were accompanied by the
+audience with a storm of cries and stamping. They greeted each other,
+the father inquired for Milita, they smiled with the sympathy of two
+good fellows and each went back to his group; the son-in-law to his
+club-mates in a box, still wearing the dress suits of the respectable
+gatherings from which they came<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span>&mdash;the painter to the orchestra seats
+with the long-haired young fellows who were his escort.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales was gratified to see L&oacute;pez de Sosa greeting the most
+fashionable, highest-priced <i>cocottes</i> and smiling to comic-opera stars
+with the familiarity of an old friend.</p>
+
+<p>That boy had excellent connections, and he regarded this as an indirect
+honor to his position as a father.</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner frequently found himself dragged out of his orbit of serious,
+substantial dinners and evening-parties, which he continued to frequent
+in order not to lose his friendships which were his only source of
+income.</p>
+
+<p>"You are coming with me to-night," the master would say mysteriously.
+"We will dine wherever you like, and afterwards I will show you
+something."</p>
+
+<p>And he took him to the theater where he sat restless and impatient until
+the chorus came on the stage. Then he would nudge Cotoner, who was sunk
+in his seat, with his eyes wide open, but asleep inside, in the sweet
+pleasure of good digestion.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen, look! the third from the right, the little girl&mdash;the one in the
+yellow shawl!"</p>
+
+<p>"I see her. What about her?" said his friend in a sour voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Look at her closely. Who does she look like? Who does she remind you
+of?"</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner answered with a grunt of indifference. She probably looked like
+her mother. What did he care about such resemblances. But his
+astonishment aroused him from his quiet when he heard Renovales say he
+thought her a rare likeness of his wife, and was indignant at him
+because he did not recognize it.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Mariano, where are your eyes?" he exclaimed with no less sourness.
+"What resemblance is there between that scraggly girl with her starved
+face and your poor, dead wife. If you see a sorry-looking bean pole you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span>
+will give it a name, Josephina,&mdash;and there's nothing more to say."</p>
+
+<p>Although Renovales was at first irritated at his friend's blindness, he
+was finally convinced. He had probably deceived himself, as long as
+Cotoner did not find the likeness. He must remember the dead woman
+better than he himself; love did not disturb <i>his</i> memory.</p>
+
+<p>But a few days later he would once more besiege Cotoner with a
+mysterious air. "I have something to show you." And leaving the company
+of the merry lads who annoyed his old friend, he would take him to a
+music hall and point out another scandalous woman who was kicking a
+fling or doing a <i>danse du ventre</i>, and revealed her anemic emaciation
+under a mask of rouge.</p>
+
+<p>"How about this one?" the master would implore, almost in terror as if
+he doubted his own eyes. "Don't you think she looks something like her?
+Doesn't she remind you of her?"</p>
+
+<p>His friend broke out angrily:</p>
+
+<p>"You're crazy. What likeness is there between that poor little woman, so
+good, so sweet and so refined, and this low creature?"</p>
+
+<p>Renovales, after several failures which made him doubt the accuracy of
+his memory, did not dare to consult his friend. As soon as he tried to
+take him to a new show, Cotoner would draw back.</p>
+
+<p>"Another discovery? Come, Mariano, get these ideas out of your head. If
+people found out about it, they would think that you were crazy."</p>
+
+<p>But defying his wrath, the master insisted one evening with great
+obstinacy that he must go with him to see the "Bella Fregolina," a
+Spanish girl, who was singing at a little theater in the low quarter,
+and whose name was displayed in letters a meter high in the shop windows
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span> Madrid. He had spent more than two weeks watching her every evening.</p>
+
+<p>"I must have you see her, Pepe. Just for a minute. I beg you. I am sure
+that this time you won't say that I am mistaken."</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner gave in, persuaded by the imploring tone of his friend. They
+waited for the appearance of the "Bella Fregolina" for a long time,
+watching dances and listening to songs accompanied by the howls of the
+audience. The wonder was reserved till the last. At last, with a sort of
+solemnity, amid a murmur of expectation, the orchestra began to play a
+piece well known to all the admirers of the "star," a ray of rosy light
+crossed the little stage and the "Bella" entered.</p>
+
+<p>She was a slight little girl, so thin that she was almost emaciated. Her
+face, of a sweet melancholy beauty, was the most striking thing about
+her. Beneath her black dress, covered with silver threads, which spread
+out like a broad bell, you could see her slender legs, so thin that the
+flesh seemed hardly to cover the bones. Above the lace of her gown her
+skin, painted white, marked the slight curve of her breasts and the
+prominent collar bones. The first thing you saw about her were her eyes,
+large, clear, and girlish, but the eyes of a depraved girl, in which a
+licentious expression flickered, without, however, hurting their pure
+surface. She moved like an overgrown school-girl, arms akimbo, bashful
+and blushing and in this position she sang in a thin, high voice,
+obscene verses which contrasted strangely with her apparent timidity.
+This was her charm and the audience received her atrocious words with
+roars of delight, contenting themselves with this, without demanding
+that she dance, respecting her hieratic stiffness.</p>
+
+<p>When the painter saw her appear he nudged his friend.</p>
+
+<p>He did not dare to speak, waiting for his opinion anx<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span>iously. He
+followed his inspection out of the corner of his eye.</p>
+
+<p>His friend was merciful.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, she is something like her. Her eyes,&mdash;figure,&mdash;expression; she
+reminds me of her. She is very much, like her. But the monkey face she
+is making now! The words! No, that destroys all likeness."</p>
+
+<p>And as if he were angry that that little girl without any voice and
+without any sense of shame, should be compared to the sweet Josephina,
+he commented with sarcastic admiration on all the cynical expressions
+with which she ended her couplets.</p>
+
+<p>"Very pretty! Very refined!"</p>
+
+<p>But Renovales, deaf to these ironical remarks, absorbed in the
+contemplation of "Fregolina," kept on poking him and whispering:</p>
+
+<p>"It's she, isn't it? Just exactly; the same body. And besides, the girl
+has some talent; she's funny."</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner nodded ironically: "Yes, very." And when he found that Mariano
+wanted to stay for the next act and did not move from his seat, he
+though of leaving him. Finally he stayed, stretching out in his seat
+with the determination to have a nap, lulled by the music and the cries
+of the audience.</p>
+
+<p>An impatient hand aroused him from his comfortable doze. "Pepe, Pepe."
+He shook his head and opened his eyes ill-naturedly. "What's the
+matter?" In Renovales' face he saw a honeyed, treacherous smile, some
+folly that he wanted to propose in the most pleasing manner.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought we might go behind the scenes for a minute: we could see her
+at close range."</p>
+
+<p>His friend answered him indignantly. Mariano thought he was a young
+buck; he forgot how he looked. That<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span> woman would laugh at them, she
+would assume the air of the Chaste Susanna, besieged by the two old men.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales was silent, but in a little while he once more aroused his
+friend from his nap.</p>
+
+<p>"You might go in alone, Pepe. You know more about these things than I
+do. You are more daring. You might tell her that I want to paint her
+portrait. Think, a portrait with my signature!"</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner started to laugh, in sheer admiration of the princely simplicity
+with which the master gave him the commission.</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir; I am highly honored by such a favor, but I am not
+going. You confounded fool. Do you suppose that girl knows who Renovales
+is or has ever even heard of his name?"</p>
+
+<p>The master expressed his astonishment with childlike simplicity.</p>
+
+<p>"Man alive. I believe that the name Renovales&mdash;that what the papers have
+said&mdash;that my portraits&mdash;&mdash; Be frank, say that you don't want to."</p>
+
+<p>And he was silent, offended at his companion's refusal and his doubt
+that his fame had reached this corner. Friends sometimes abuse us with
+unexpected scorn and great injustice.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the show the master felt that he must do something, not go
+away without sending the "Bella Fregolina" some evidence of his
+presence. He bought an elaborate basket of flowers from a flower vendor
+who was starting home, discouraged at the poor business. She should
+deliver it immediately to Se&ntilde;orita&mdash;"Fregolina."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, to Pepita," said the woman with a knowing air, as if she were one
+of her friends.</p>
+
+<p>"And tell her it is from Se&ntilde;or Renovales&mdash;from Renovales, the painter."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The woman nodded, repeating the name. "Very well, Renovales," just as
+she would have said any other name. And without the least emotion she
+took the five dollars which the painter gave her.</p>
+
+<p>"Five dollars! You idiot," muttered his friend, losing all respect for
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Good Cotoner refused to go with him after that. In vain Renovales talked
+to him enthusiastically every night about that girl, deeply impressed by
+her different impersonations. Now she appeared in a pale pink dress,
+almost like some clothes put away in the closets of his house; now she
+entered in a hat trimmed with flowers and cherries, much larger, but
+still something like a certain straw hat which he could find amid the
+confusion of Josephina's old finery. Oh, how it reminded him of her!
+Every night he was struck with some renewed memory.</p>
+
+<p>Lacking Cotoner's assistance, he went to see the "Bella" with some of
+the young fellows of his disrespectful court. These boys spoke of the
+"star" with respectful scorn, as the fox in the fable gazed at the
+distant grapes, consoling himself at the thought of their sourness. They
+praised her beauty, seen from a distance; according to them she was
+"lily-like"; she had the holy beauty of sin. She was out of their reach;
+she wore costly jewels and according to all reports had influential
+friends, all those young gentlemen in dress clothes who occupied the
+boxes during the last act, and waited for her at the stage door to take
+her to dinner.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales was gnawed with impatience, unable to find a way to meet her.
+Every night he sent his little baskets of flowers, or huge bouquets. The
+"star" must be informed whence these gifts came, for she looked around
+the audience for the ugly elderly gentleman, deigning to grant him a
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>One night the master saw L&oacute;pez de Sosa speak to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> singer. Perhaps his
+son-in-law was acquainted with her. And boldly as a lover, he waited for
+him when he came out to implore his help.</p>
+
+<p>He wanted to paint her; she was a magnificent model for a certain work
+he had in mind. He said it blushingly, stammering, but L&oacute;pez laughed at
+his timidity and seemed disposed to protect him.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Pepita? A wonderful woman, in spite of the fact that she is on the
+decline. With all her school-girl face, if you could only see her at a
+party! She drinks like a fish. She's a terror!"</p>
+
+<p>But afterwards, with a serious expression, he explained the
+difficulties. She "belonged" to one of his friends, a lad from the
+provinces who, eager to win notoriety, was losing one-half his fortune
+gambling at the Casino and was calmly letting that girl devour the other
+half,&mdash;she gave him some reputation. He would speak to her; they were
+old friends; nothing wrong&mdash;eh, father? It would not be hard to persuade
+her. This Pepita had a predilection for anything that was unusual; she
+was rather&mdash;romantic. He would explain to her who the great artist was,
+enhancing the honor of acting as his model.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't stint on the money," said the master anxiously. "All that she
+wants. Don't be afraid to be generous."</p>
+
+<p>One morning Renovales called Cotoner to talk to him with wild
+expressions of joy.</p>
+
+<p>"She's going to come! She's going to come this very afternoon!"</p>
+
+<p>The old painter looked surprised.</p>
+
+<p>"Who?"</p>
+
+<p>"The 'Bella Fregolina.' Pepita. My son-in-law tells me he has persuaded
+her. She will come this afternoon at three. He is coming with her
+himself."</p>
+
+<p>Then he cast a worried glance at his workshop. For some time it had been
+deserted; it must be set in order.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And the servant on one side and the two artists on the other, began to
+tidy up the room hastily.</p>
+
+<p>The portraits of Josephina and the canvas with nothing but her head were
+piled up in a corner by the master's feverish hands. What was the use of
+those phantoms when the real thing was going to appear. In their place
+he put a large white canvas, gazing at its untouched surface with
+hopeful eyes. What things he was going to do that afternoon! What a
+power for work he felt!</p>
+
+<p>When the two artists were left alone, Renovales seemed restless,
+dissatisfied, constantly suspecting that something had been overlooked
+for this visit, toward which he looked with chills of anxiety. Flowers;
+they must get some flowers, fill all the old vases in the studio, create
+an atmosphere of delicate perfume.</p>
+
+<p>And Cotoner ran through the garden with the servant, plundered the
+greenhouse and came in with an armful of flowers, obedient and
+submissive as a faithful friend, but with a sarcastic reproach in his
+eyes. All that for the "Bella Fregolina"! The master was cracked; he was
+in his second childhood! If only this visit would cure him of his mania,
+which was almost madness!</p>
+
+<p>Afterwards the master had further orders. He must provide on one of the
+tables in the studio sweets, champagne, anything good he could find.
+Cotoner spoke of sending for the valet, complaining of the tasks which
+were imposed on him as a result of the visit of this girl of the
+guileless smile and the vile songs, who stood with arms akimbo.</p>
+
+<p>"No, Pepe," the master implored. "Listen&mdash;I don't want the valet to
+know. He talks afterward; my daughter probes him with questions."</p>
+
+<p>Cotoner went away with a resigned expression and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span> when he returned an
+hour later, he found Renovales in the model's room arranging some
+clothes.</p>
+
+<p>The old painter lined up his packages on the table. He put the
+confectionery in antique plates and took the bottles out of their
+wrappers.</p>
+
+<p>"You are served, sir," he said with ironical respect. "Do you wish
+anything else, sir? The whole family is in a state of revolution over
+this noble lady; your son-in-law is bringing her; I am acting as your
+valet; all you need now is to send for your daughter to help her
+undress."</p>
+
+<p>"Thanks, Pepe, thanks ever so much," said the master with naive
+gratitude, apparently undisturbed by his jests.</p>
+
+<p>At luncheon time Cotoner saw him come into the dining-room with his hair
+carefully combed, his mustache curled, wearing his best suit with a rose
+in the buttonhole. The Bohemian laughed boisterously. The last straw! He
+was crazy; they would make sport of him!</p>
+
+<p>The master scarcely touched the meal. Afterwards he walked up and down
+alone in the studio. How slowly the time went! At each turn through the
+three studios he looked at the hands of an old clock of Saxon china,
+which stood on a table of colored marble, with its back reflected in a
+tall, Venetian mirror.</p>
+
+<p>It was already three. The master wondered if she was not going to come.
+Quarter past three,&mdash;half-past three. No, she was not coming; it was
+past the time. Those women who live amid obligations and demands,
+without a minute to themselves!</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly he heard steps and Cotoner entered.</p>
+
+<p>"She is here; here she comes. Good luck, master. Have a good time! I
+guess you have imposed on me long enough and will not expect me to
+stay."</p>
+
+<p>He went out waving him an ironical farewell and a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span> little later
+Renovales heard L&oacute;pez de Sosa's voice, approaching slowly, explaining to
+his companion the pictures and furniture which attracted her attention.</p>
+
+<p>They entered. The "Bella Fregolina" looked astonished; she seemed
+intimidated by the majestic silence of the studio. What a big, princely
+house, so different from all those she had seen! That ancient, solid,
+historic luxury with its rare furniture filled her with fear! She looked
+at Renovales with great respect. He seemed to her more distinguished
+than that other man whom she had seen indistinctly in the orchestra of
+her little theater. He was awe-inspiring, as if he were a great
+personage, different from all the men with whom she had had to do. To
+her fear was added a sort of admiration. How much money that old boy
+must have, living in such style!</p>
+
+<p>Renovales, too, was deeply moved when he saw her so close at hand.</p>
+
+<p>At first he hesitated. Was she really like the other? The paint on her
+face disconcerted him&mdash;the layer of rouge with black lines about the
+eyes&mdash;visible through the veil. The <i>other</i> did not paint. But when he
+looked at her eyes, the striking resemblance rose again, and starting
+from them he gradually restored the beloved face under the layers of
+pomade.</p>
+
+<p>The "star" examined the canvases which covered the walls. How pretty!
+And did this gentleman do all that? She wanted to see herself like that,
+proud and beautiful in a canvas. Did he truly want to paint her? And she
+drew herself up vainly, delighted that people thought she was beautiful,
+that she would enjoy the emotion until then unknown of seeing her image
+reproduced by a great artist.</p>
+
+<p>L&oacute;pez de Sosa excused himself to his father-in-law. She was to blame for
+their being late. You could never<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> get a woman like that to hurry. She
+went to bed at daybreak; he had found her in bed.</p>
+
+<p>Then he said good-by, understanding the embarrassment his presence might
+cause. Pepita was a good girl, she was dazzled by his works and the
+appearance of the house. The master could do what he wanted with her.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, little girl, you stay here. The gentleman is my father; I told
+you already. Be sure and be a good girl."</p>
+
+<p>And he went out, followed by the forced laugh of them both, who greeted
+this recommendation with uneasy merriment.</p>
+
+<p>A long and painful silence followed. The master did not know what to
+say. Timidity and emotion weighed on his will. She seemed no less
+disturbed. That great room, so silent and imposing with its massive,
+superb decorations, different from anything she had seen, frightened
+her. She felt the vague terror which precedes an unknown operation.
+Besides, she was disturbed by the man's glowing eyes fixed on her, with
+a quiver on his cheeks and a twitching of his lips, as if they were
+tormented by thirst.</p>
+
+<p>She soon recovered from her timidity. She was used to these moments of
+shamefaced silence which came with the lone meeting of two strangers.
+She knew these interviews which begin hesitatingly and end in rough
+familiarity.</p>
+
+<p>She looked around with a professional smile, eager to end the unpleasant
+situation as soon as possible.</p>
+
+<p>"When you will. Where shall I undress?"</p>
+
+<p>Renovales started at the sound of her voice, as if he had forgotten that
+that image could speak. The simplicity with which she dispensed with
+explanations surprised him likewise.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His son-in-law did things well; he had brought her well coached, callous
+to all surprises.</p>
+
+<p>The master showed her the way to the model's room and remained outside,
+prudently, turning his head without knowing why, so as not to see
+through the half-opened door. There was a long silence, broken by the
+rustle of falling clothes, the metallic click of buttons and hooks.
+Suddenly her voice came to the master, smothered, distant with a sort of
+timidity.</p>
+
+<p>"My stockings too? Must I take them off?"</p>
+
+<p>Renovales knew this objection of all models when they undressed for the
+first time. L&oacute;pez de Sosa, carrying his desire of pleasing his father to
+the extreme, had spoken to her of giving her body wholly and she
+undressed without asking any further explanations, with the calm of
+accepted duty, thinking that her presence there was absurd for any other
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>The painter came out of his silence; he called to her uneasily. She must
+not stay undressed. In the room there were clothes for her to put on.
+And without turning his head, reaching his arm through the half open
+door he pointed out blindly what he had left. There was a pink dress, a
+hat, shoes, stockings, a shirt.</p>
+
+<p>Pepita protested when she saw these cast-off garments, showing an
+aversion to putting on those underclothes which seemed worn and old.</p>
+
+<p>"The shirt, too? The stockings? No, the dress is enough."</p>
+
+<p>But the master begged her impatiently. She must put them all on; his
+painting demanded it. The long silence of the girl proved that she was
+complying, putting on these old garments, overcoming her repugnance.</p>
+
+<p>When she came out of the room she smiled with a sort of pity, as if she
+were laughing at herself. Renovales drew back, stirred by his own work,
+bewildered, feeling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span> his temples throbbing, fancying that the pictures
+and furniture were whirling about him.</p>
+
+<p>Poor "Fregolina"! What a delightful clown! She felt like laughing at the
+thought of the storm of cries which would burst out in her theater if
+she should appear on the stage dressed in this fashion, of the jests of
+her friends if she should come into one of their dinners in these
+clothes of twenty years ago. She did not know these styles, and to her
+they seemed to belong to a remote antiquity. The master leaned over the
+back of a chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Josephina! Josephina!"</p>
+
+<p>It was she, such as he kept her in his memory&mdash;as she was that happy
+summer in the Roman mountains, in her pink dress and that rustic hat
+which gave her the dainty air of a village girl in the opera. Those
+fashions at which the younger generation laughed were for him the most
+beautiful, the most artistic that feminine taste had ever produced; they
+recalled the spring of his life.</p>
+
+<p>"Josephina! Josephina!"</p>
+
+<p>He remained silent, for these exclamations were born and died in his
+thoughts. He did not dare to move or speak, for fear this apparition of
+his dreams would vanish. She, smiling, was delighted at the effect her
+appearance had on the painter and seeing her reflection in a distant
+mirror, recognized that in this strange costume she did not look at all
+badly.</p>
+
+<p>"Where shall I go? Sitting or standing?"</p>
+
+<p>The master could hardly speak; his voice was hoarse, labored.</p>
+
+<p>She could pose as she wished. And she sat down in a chair adopting a
+posture which she considered very graceful&mdash;her cheek on one hand, her
+legs crossed, just as she was wont to sit in the green room of the
+theater,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> showing a bit of open-work pink silk stocking under her skirt.
+That too reminded the painter of the other.</p>
+
+<p>It was she! She sat before his eyes in bodily form, with the perfume of
+the form he loved.</p>
+
+<p>From instinct, from habit, he took up his palette and a brush stained
+with black, trying to trace the outlines of that figure. Ah, his hand
+was old, heavy, trembling! Where had his old time skill fled, his
+drawing, his striking qualities? Had he really ever painted? Was he
+truly the painter Renovales? He had suddenly forgotten everything. His
+head seemed empty, his hand paralyzed, the white canvas filled him with
+a terror of the unknown. He did not know how to paint; he could not
+paint. His efforts were useless; his mind was deadened. Perhaps,&mdash;some
+other day. Now his ears hummed, his face was pale, his ears were red,
+purple, as if they were on the point of dripping blood. In his mouth he
+felt the torment of a deathly thirst.</p>
+
+<p>The "Bella Fregolina" saw him throw down his palette and come toward her
+with a wild expression.</p>
+
+<p>But she felt no fear; she knew those distorted faces. This sudden rush
+was no doubt part of the program; she was warned when she went there
+after her friendly conversation with the son-in-law. That gentleman, so
+serious and so imposing, was like all the men she knew, as brutal as the
+rest.</p>
+
+<p>She saw him come to her with open arms, take her in a close embrace,
+fall at her feet with a hoarse cry, as if he were stifling; and she,
+gently and sympathetically encouraged him, bending her head, offering
+her lips with an automatic loving expression which was the implement of
+her profession.</p>
+
+<p>The kiss was enough to overcome the master completely.</p>
+
+<p>"Josephina! Josephina!"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The perfume of the happy days rose from her clothes, surrounding her
+adorable person. It was her form, her flesh! He was going to die at her
+feet, suffocated by the immense desire that swelled within him. It was
+she; her very eyes&mdash;her eyes! And as he raised his glance to lose
+himself in their soft pupils, to gaze at himself in their trembling
+mirror, he saw two cold eyes, which examined him, half closed with
+professional curiosity, taking a scornful delight from their calm height
+in this intoxication of the flesh, this madness which groveled, moaning
+with desire.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales was thunderstruck with surprise; he felt something icy run
+down his back, paralyzing him; his eyes were veiled with a cloud of
+disappointment and sorrow.</p>
+
+<p>Was it really Josephina whom he had in his arms? It was her body, her
+perfume, her clothes, her beauty, pale as a dying flower. But no, it was
+not she! Those eyes! In vain did they look at him differently, alarmed
+at this sudden reaction; in vain they softened with a tender light,
+trained by habit. The deceit was useless; he saw beyond, he penetrated
+through those bright windows into the depths; he found only emptiness.
+The other's soul was not there. That maddening perfume no longer moved
+him; it was a false essence. He had before him merely a reproduction of
+the beloved vase, but the incense, the soul, lost forever.</p>
+
+<p>Renovales, standing up, drew away from her, looking at that woman with
+terror in his eyes, and finally threw himself on a couch, with his face
+in his hands.</p>
+
+<p>The girl, hearing him sob, was afraid and ran toward the models' room to
+take off those clothes, to flee. The man must be mad.</p>
+
+<p>The master was weeping. Farewell, youth! Farewell desire! Farewell
+dreams; enchanting sirens of life, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> have fled forever. Useless the
+search, useless the struggle in the solitude of life. Death had him in
+his grasp, he was his and only through him could he renew his youth.
+These images were useless. He could not find another to call up the
+memory of the dead like this hired woman whom he had held in his
+arms&mdash;and still, it was not she!</p>
+
+<p>At the supreme moment, on the verge of reality, that indefinable
+something had vanished, that something which had been enclosed in the
+body of his Josephina, of his <i>maja</i>, whom he had worshiped in the
+nights of his youth.</p>
+
+<p>Immense, irreparable disappointment flooded his body with the icy calm
+of old age.</p>
+
+<p>Fall, ye towers of illusion! Sink, ye castles of fancy, built with the
+longing to make the way fair, to hide the horizon! The path still
+remained unbroken, barren and deserted. In vain would he sit by the
+roadside, putting off the hour of his departure, in vain would he bow
+his head that he might not see. The longer his rest, the longer his
+fearful torment. At every hour he was destined to gaze at the dreaded
+end of the last journey&mdash;unclouded, undisturbed&mdash;the dwelling from which
+there is no return&mdash;the black, greedy abyss&mdash;death!</p>
+<p><br /></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> The life of this character is the theme of <i>La Horda</i>, by
+the same author.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Woman Triumphant, by Vicente Blasco Ibañez
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Woman Triumphant, by Vicente Blasco Ibanez
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Woman Triumphant
+       (La Maja Desnuda)
+
+Author: Vicente Blasco Ibanez
+
+Translator: Hayward Keniston
+
+Release Date: July 19, 2006 [EBook #18876]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WOMAN TRIUMPHANT ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Carlo Traverso, Janet Blenkinship, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreaders Europe at
+http://dp.rastko.net.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+WOMAN TRIUMPHANT
+
+(LA MAJA DESNUDA)
+
+BY
+
+VICENTE BLASCO IBANEZ
+
+
+TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH
+
+BY
+
+HAYWARD KENISTON
+
+WITH A SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY THE AUTHOR
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+
+NEW YORK
+E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
+681 FIFTH AVENUE
+Copyright, 1920,
+BY K. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
+
+_All Rights Reserved_
+
+
+
+
+First printing March, 1920
+
+Second printing March, 1920
+
+Third printing March, 1920
+
+Fourth printing March, 1920
+
+Fifth printing March, 1920
+
+Sixth printing March, 1920
+
+Seventh printing March. 1920
+
+Eighth printing March, 1920
+
+Ninth printing April, 1920
+
+Tenth printing April, 1920
+
+Eleventh printing April, 1920
+
+Twelfth printing April, 1920
+
+Thirteenth printing April, 1920
+
+Fourteenth printing April, 1920
+
+
+Printed In the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTORY NOTE TO THE ENGLISH TRANSLATION
+
+
+The title of this novel in the original, _La maja desnuda_, "The Nude
+Maja," is also the name of one of the most famous pictures of the great
+Spanish painter Francisco Goya.
+
+The word _maja_ has no exact equivalent in English or in any of the
+modern languages. Literally, it means "bedecked," "showy," "gaudily
+attired," "flashy," "dazzling," etc., and it was applied at the end of
+the eighteenth century and at the beginning of the nineteenth to a
+certain class of gay women of the lower strata of Madrid society
+notorious for their love of dancing and their fondness for exhibiting
+themselves conspicuously at bull-fights and all popular celebrations.
+The great ladies of the aristocracy affected the free ways and imitated
+the picturesque dress of the _maja_; Goya made this type the central
+figure of many of his genre paintings, and the dramatist Ramon de la
+Cruz based most of his _sainetes_--farcical pieces in one act--upon the
+customs and rivalries of these women. The dress invented by the _maja_,
+consisting of a short skirt partly covered by a net with berry-shaped
+tassels, white _mantilla_ and high shell-comb, is considered all over
+the world as the national costume of Spanish women.
+
+When the novel first appeared in Spain some years ago, a certain part of
+the Madrid public, unduly evil-minded, thought that it had discovered
+the identity of the real persons whom I had taken as models to draw my
+characters. This claim provoked a scandalous sensation and gave my book
+an unwholesome notoriety. It was thought that the protagonists of _La
+maja desnuda_ were an illustrious Spanish painter of world-wide fame,
+who is my friend, and an aristocratic lady very celebrated at the time
+but now forgotten. I protested against this unwarranted and fantastic
+interpretation. Although I draw my characters from life, I do so only in
+a very fragmentary way (like all the great creative novelists whom I
+admire as masters in the field of fiction), using the materials gathered
+in my observations to form completely new types which are the direct and
+legitimate offspring of my own imagination. To use a figure: as a
+novelist I am a painter, not a photographer. Although I seek my
+inspiration in reality, I copy it in accordance with my own way of
+seeing it; I do not reproduce it with the mechanical servility of the
+photographic camera.
+
+It is possible that my imaginary heroes are vaguely reminiscent of
+beings who actually exist. Subconsciousness is the novelist's principal
+instrument, and this subconsciousness frequently mocks us, leading us to
+mistake for our own creation the things which we have unwittingly
+observed in Nature. But despite this, it is unfair, as well as risky,
+for the reader to assign the names of real persons to the characters of
+fiction, saying, "This is So-and-so."
+
+It would be equally unfair to consider this novel as audacious or of
+doubtful morality. The artistic world which I describe in _La maja
+desnuda_ cannot be expected to have the same conception of life as the
+conventional world. Far from believing it immoral, I consider this one
+of the most moral novels I have ever written. And it is for this reason
+that, with a full realization of the standards demanded by the
+English-reading public, I have not hesitated to authorize the present
+translation without palliation or amputation, fully convinced that the
+reader will not find anything in this novel objectionable or offensive
+to his moral sense. Morality is not to be found in words but in deeds
+and in the lessons which these deeds teach.
+
+The difficulty of adequately translating the word _maja_ into English
+led to the adoption of "Woman Triumphant" as the title of the present
+version. I believe it is a happy selection; it interprets the spirit of
+the novel. But it must be borne in mind that the woman here is the wife
+of the protagonist. It is the wife who triumphs, resurrecting in spirit
+to exert an overwhelming influence over the life of a man who had wished
+to live without her.
+
+Renovales, the hero, is simply the personification of human desire, this
+poor desire which, in reality, does not know what it wants, eternally
+fickle and unsatisfied. When we finally obtain what we desire, it does
+not seem enough. "More: I want more," we say. If we lose something that
+made life unbearable, we immediately wish it back as indispensable to
+our happiness. Such are we: poor deluded children who cried yesterday
+for what we scorn to-day and shall want again to-morrow; poor deluded
+beings plunging across the span of life on the Icarian wings of caprice.
+
+                                                 VICENTE BLASCO IBANEZ.
+
+New York, January, 1920.
+
+
+
+
+WOMAN TRIUMPHANT
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+I
+
+
+It was eleven o'clock in the morning when Mariano Renovales reached the
+Museo del Prado. Several years had passed since the famous painter had
+entered it. The dead did not attract him; very interesting they were,
+very worthy of respect, under the glorious shroud of the centuries, but
+art was moving along new paths and he could not study there under the
+false glare of the skylights, where he saw reality only through the
+temperaments of other men. A bit of sea, a mountainside, a group of
+ragged people, an expressive head attracted him more than that palace,
+with its broad staircases, its white columns and its statues of bronze
+and alabaster--a solemn pantheon of art, where the neophytes vacillated
+in fruitless confusion, without knowing what course to follow.
+
+The master Renovales stopped for a few moments at the foot of the
+stairway. He contemplated the valley through which you approach the
+palace--with its slopes of fresh turf, dotted at intervals with the
+sickly little trees--with a certain emotion, as men are wont to
+contemplate, after a long absence, the places familiar to their youth.
+Above the scattered growth the ancient church of Los Jeronimos, with its
+gothic masonry, outlined against the blue sky its twin towers and ruined
+arcades. The wintry foliage of the Retiro served as a background for
+the white mass of the Cason. Renovales thought of the frescos of
+Giordano that decorated its ceilings. Afterwards, he fixed his attention
+on a building with red walls and a stone portal, which pretentiously
+obstructed the space in the foreground, at the edge of the green slope.
+Bah! The Academy! And the artist's sneer included in the same loathing
+the Academy of Language and the other Academies--painting, literature,
+every manifestation of human thought, dried, smoked, and swathed, with
+the immortality of a mummy, in the bandages of tradition, rules, and
+respect for precedent.
+
+A gust of icy wind shook the skirts of his overcoat, his long beard
+tinged with gray and his wide felt hat, beneath the brim of which
+protruded the heavy locks of his hair, that had excited so much comment
+in his youth, but which had gradually grown shorter with prudent
+trimming, as the master rose in the world, winning fame and money.
+
+Renovales felt cold in the damp valley. It was one of those bright,
+freezing days that are so frequent in the winter in Madrid. The sun was
+shining; the sky was blue; but from the mountains, covered with snow,
+came an icy wind, that hardened the ground, making it as brittle as
+glass. In the corners, where the warmth of the sun did not reach, the
+morning frost still glistened like a coating of sugar. On the mossy
+carpet, the sparrows, thin with the privations of winter, trotted back
+and forth like children, shaking their bedraggled feathers.
+
+The stairway of the Museo recalled to the master his early youth, when
+at sixteen he had climbed those steps many a time with his stomach faint
+from the wretched meal at the boarding-house. How many mornings he had
+spent in that old building copying Velasquez! The place brought to his
+memory his dead hopes, a host of illusions that now made his smile;
+recollections of hunger and humiliating bargaining to make his first
+money by the sale of copies. His large, stern face, his brow that filled
+his pupils and admirers with terror lighted up with a merry smile. He
+recalled how he used to go into the Museo with halting steps, how he
+feared to leave the easel, lest people might notice the gaping soles of
+his boots that left his feet uncovered.
+
+He passed through the vestibule and opened the first glass door.
+Instantly the noises of the world outside ceased; the rattling of the
+carriages in the Prado; the bells of the street-cars, the dull rumble of
+the carts, the shrill cries of the children who were running about on
+the slopes. He opened the second door, and his face, swollen by the
+cold, felt the caress of warm air, buzzing with the vague hum of
+silence. The footfalls of the visitors reverberated in the manner
+peculiar to large, unoccupied buildings. The slam of the door, as it
+closed, resounded like a cannon shot, passing from hall to hall through
+the heavy curtains. From the gratings of the registers poured the
+invisible breath of the furnaces. The people, on entering, spoke in a
+low tone, as if they were in a cathedral; their faces assumed an
+expression of unnatural seriousness, as though they were intimidated by
+the thousands of canvases that lined the walls, by the enormous busts
+that decorated the circle of the rotunda and the middle of the central
+salon.
+
+On seeing Renovales, the two door-keepers, in their long frock-coats,
+started to their feet. They did not know who he was, but he certainly
+was somebody. They had often seen that face, perhaps in the newspapers,
+perhaps on match-boxes. It was associated in their minds with the glory
+of popularity, with the high honors reserved for people of distinction.
+Presently they recognized him. It was so many years since they had seen
+him there! And the two attendants, with their caps covered with
+gold-braid in their hands and with an obsequious smile, came forward
+towards the great artist.
+
+"Good morning, Don Mariano. Did Senor de Renovales wish something? Did
+he want them to call the curator?" They spoke with oily obsequiousness,
+with the confusion of courtiers who see a foreign sovereign suddenly
+enter their palace, recognizing him through his disguise.
+
+Renovales rid himself of them with a brusque gesture and cast a glance
+over the large decorative canvases of the rotunda, that recalled the
+wars of the 17th century; generals with bristling mustaches and plumed
+slouch-hat, directing the battle with a short baton, as though they were
+directing an orchestra, troops of arquebusiers disappearing downhill
+with banners of red and blue crosses at their front, forests of pikes
+rising from the smoke, green meadows of Flanders in the
+backgrounds--thundering, fruitless combats that were almost the last
+gasps of a Spain of European influence. He lifted a heavy curtain and
+entered the spacious salon, where the people at the other end looked
+like little wax figures under the dull illumination of the skylights.
+
+The artist continued straight ahead, scarcely noticing the pictures, old
+acquaintances that could tell him nothing new. His eyes sought the
+people without, however, finding in them any greater novelty. It seemed
+as though they formed a part of the building and had not moved from it
+in many years; good-natured fathers with a group of children before
+their knees, explaining the meaning of the pictures; a school teacher,
+with her well-behaved and silent pupils who, in obedience to the command
+of their superior, passed without stopping before the lightly clad
+saints; a gentleman with two priests, talking loudly, to show that he
+was intelligent and almost at home there; several foreign ladies with
+their veils caught up over their straw hats and their coats on their
+arms, consulting the catalogue, all with a sort of family-air, with
+identical expressions of admiration and curiosity, until Renovales
+wondered if they were the same ones he had seen there years before, the
+last time he was there.
+
+As he passed, he greeted the great masters mentally; on one side the
+holy figures of El Greco, with their greenish or bluish spirituality,
+slender and undulating; beyond, the wrinkled, black heads of Ribera,
+with ferocious expressions of torture and pain--marvelous artists, whom
+Renovales admired, while determined not to imitate them. Afterwards,
+between the railing that protects the pictures and the line of busts,
+show-cases and marble tables supported by gilded lions, he came upon the
+easels of several copyists. They were boys from the School of Fine Arts,
+or poverty-stricken young ladies with run-down heels and dilapidated
+hats, who were copying Murillos. They were tracing on the canvas the
+blue of the Virgin's robe or the plump flesh of the curly-haired boys
+that played with the Divine Lamb. Their copies were commissions from
+pious people; a _genre_ that found an easy sale among the benefactors of
+convents and oratories. The smoke of the candles, the wear of years, the
+blindness of devotion would dim the colors, and some day the eyes of the
+worshipers, weeping in supplication, would see the celestial figures
+move with mysterious life on their blackened background, as they
+implored from them wondrous miracles.
+
+The master made his way toward the Hall of Velasquez. It was there that
+his friend Tekli was working. His visit to the Museo had no other object
+than to see the copy that the Hungarian painter was making of the
+picture of _Las Meninas_.
+
+The day before, when the foreigner was announced in his studio, he had
+remained perplexed for a long while, looking at the name on the card.
+Tekli! And then all at once he remembered a friend of twenty years
+before, when he lived in Rome; a good-natured Hungarian, who admired him
+sincerely and who made up for his lack of genius with a silent
+persistency in his work, like a beast of burden.
+
+Renovales was glad to see his little blue eyes, hidden under his thin,
+silky eyebrows, his jaw, protruding like a shovel, a feature that made
+him look very much like the Austrian monarchs--his tall frame that bent
+forward under the impulse of excitement, while he stretched out his bony
+arms, long as tentacles, and greeted him in Italian:
+
+"Oh, _maestro, caro maestro!_"
+
+He had taken refuge in a professorship, like all artists who lack the
+power to continue the upward climb, who fall in the rut. Renovales
+recognized the artist-official in his spotless suit, dark and proper, in
+his dignified glance that rested from time to time on his shining boots
+that seemed to reflect the whole studio. He even wore on one lapel of
+his coat the variegated button of some mysterious decoration. The felt
+hat, white as meringue, which he held in his hand, was the only
+discordant feature in this general effect of a public functionary.
+Renovales caught his hands with sincere enthusiasm. The famous Tekli!
+How glad he was to see him! What times they used to have in Rome! And
+with a smile of kindly superiority he listened to the story of his
+success. He was a professor in Budapest; every year he saved money in
+order to go and study in some celebrated European museum. At last he had
+succeeded in coming to Spain, fulfilling the desire he had cherished for
+many years.
+
+"_Oh, Velasquez! uel maestro, caro Mariano!_"
+
+And throwing back his head, with a dreamy expression in his eyes, he
+moved his protruding jaw covered with reddish hair, with a voluptuous
+look, as though he were sipping a glass of his sweet native Tokay.
+
+He had been in Madrid for a month, working every morning in the Museo.
+His copy of _Las Meninas_ was almost finished. He had not been to see
+his "Dear Mariano" sooner because he wanted to show him this work. Would
+he come and see him some morning in the Museo? Would he give him this
+proof of his friendship? Renovales tried to decline. What did he care
+for a copy? But there was an expression of such humble supplication in
+the Hungarian's little eyes, he showered him with so many praises of his
+great triumphs, expatiating on the success that his picture _Man
+Overboard!_ had won at the last Budapest Exhibition, that the master
+promised to go to the Museo.
+
+And a few days later, one morning when a gentleman whose portrait he was
+painting canceled his appointment, Renovales remembered his promise and
+went to the Museo del Prado, feeling, as he entered, the same sensation
+of insignificance and homesickness that a man suffers on returning to
+the university where he has passed his youth.
+
+When he found himself in the Hall of Velasquez, he suddenly felt seized
+with religious respect. There was a painter! _The_ painter! All his
+irreverent theories of hatred for the dead were left outside the door.
+The charm of those canvases that he had not seen for many years rose
+again--fresh, powerful, irresistible; it overwhelmed him, awakening his
+remorse. For a long time he remained motionless, turning his eyes from
+one picture to another, eager to comprise in one glance the whole work
+of the immortal, while around him the hum of curiosity began again.
+
+"Renovales! That's Renovales!"
+
+The news had started from the door, spreading through the whole Museo,
+reaching the Hall of Velasquez behind his steps. The groups of curious
+people stopped gazing at the pictures to look at that huge,
+self-possessed man who did not seem to realize the curiosity that
+surrounded him. The ladies, as they went from canvas to canvas, looked
+out of the corner of their eyes at the celebrated artist whose portrait
+they had seen so often. They found him more ugly, more commonplace than
+he appeared in the engravings in the papers. It did not seem possible
+that that "porter" had talent and painted women so well. Some young
+fellows approached to look at him more closely, pretending to gaze at
+the same pictures as the master. They scrutinized him, noting his
+external peculiarities with that desire for enthusiastic imitation which
+marks the novice. Some determined to copy his soft bow-tie and his
+tangled hair, with the fantastic hope that this would give them a new
+spirit for painting. Others complained to themselves that they were
+beardless and could not display the curly gray whiskers of the famous
+master.
+
+He, with his keen sensitiveness to praise, was not long in observing the
+atmosphere of curiosity that surrounded him. The young copyists seemed
+to stick closer to their easels, knitted their brows, dilated their
+nostrils, and moved their brushes slowly, with hesitation, knowing that
+he was behind them, trembling at every step that sounded on the inlaid
+floor, full of fear and desire that he might deign to cast a glance over
+their shoulders. He divined with a sort of pride what all the mouths
+were whispering, what all the eyes were saying, fixed absent-mindedly on
+the canvases only to turn toward him.
+
+"It's Renovales--the painter Renovales."
+
+The master looked for a long while at one of the copyists--an old man,
+decrepit and almost blind, with heavy convex spectacles that gave him
+the appearance of a sea-monster, whose hands trembled with senile
+unsteadiness. Renovales recognized him. Twenty years before, when he
+used to study in the Museo, he had seen him in the same spot, always
+copying _Los Borrachos_. Even if he should become completely blind, if
+the picture should be lost, he could reproduce it by feeling. In those
+days they had often talked together, but the poor man could not have the
+remotest suspicion that the Renovales whom people talked so much about
+was the same lad who on more than one occasion had borrowed a brush from
+him, but whose memory was scarcely preserved in his mind, mummified by
+eternal imitation.
+
+Renovales thought of the kindness of the chummy Bacchus and the gang of
+ruffians of his court, who for half a century had been supporting the
+household of the copyist, and he fancied he could see the old wife, the
+married children, the grandchildren--a whole family supported by the old
+man's trembling hand.
+
+Some one whispered to him the news that was filling the Museo with
+excitement and the copyist, shrugging his shoulders disdainfully, raised
+his moribund glance from his work.
+
+And so Renovales was there, the famous Renovales! At last he was going
+to see the prodigy!
+
+The master saw those grotesque eyes like those of a sea-monster, fixed
+on him, with an ironical gleam behind the heavy lenses. The grafter! He
+had already heard of that studio, as splendid as a palace, behind the
+Retire What Renovales had in such plenty had been taken from men like
+him who, for want of influence, had been left behind. He charged
+thousands of dollars for a canvas, when Velasquez worked for three
+_pesetas_ a day and Goya painted his portraits for a couple of
+doubloons. Deceit, modernism, the audacity of the younger generation
+that lacked scruples, the ignorance of the simpletons that believe the
+newspapers! The only good thing was right there before him. And once
+more shrugging his shoulders scornfully, he lost his expression of
+ironical protest and returned to his thousandth copy of _Los Borrachos_.
+
+Renovales, seeing that the curiosity about him was diminishing, entered
+the little hall that contained the picture of _Las Meninas_. There was
+Tekli in front of the famous canvas that occupies the whole back of the
+room, seated before his easel, with his white hat pushed back to leave
+free his throbbing brow that was contracted with a tenacious insistence
+on accuracy.
+
+Seeing Renovales, he rose hastily, leaving his palette on the piece of
+oil-cloth that protected the floor from spots of paint. Dear master! How
+thankful he was to him for this visit! And he showed him the copy,
+minutely accurate but without the wonderful atmosphere, without the
+miraculous realism of the original. Renovales approved with a nod; he
+admired the patient toil of that gentle ox of art, whose furrows were
+always alike, of geometric precision, without the slightest negligence
+or the least attempt at originality.
+
+"_Ti piace?_" he asked anxiously, looking into his eyes to divine his
+thoughts. "_E vero? E vero?_" he repeated with the uncertainty of a
+child who fears that he is being deceived.
+
+And suddenly calmed by the evidences of Renovales' approval, that kept
+growing more extravagant to conceal his indifference, the Hungarian
+grasped both of his hands and lifted them to his breast.
+
+_"Sono contento, maestro, sono contento."_
+
+He did not want to let Renovales go. Since he had had the generosity to
+come and see his work, he could not let him go away, they would lunch
+together at the hotel where he lived. They would open a bottle of
+Chianti to recall their life in Rome; they would talk of the merry
+Bohemian days of their youth, of those comrades of various nationalities
+that used to gather in the Cafe del Greco,--some already dead, the rest
+scattered through Europe and America, a few celebrated, the majority
+vegetating in the schools of their native land, dreaming of a final
+masterpiece before which death would probably overtake them.
+
+Renovales felt overcome by the insistence of the Hungarian, who seized
+his hands with a dramatic expression, as though he would die at a
+refusal. Good for the Chianti! They would lunch together, and while
+Tekli was giving a few touches to his work, he would wait for him,
+wandering through the Museo, renewing old memories.
+
+When he returned to the Hall of Velasquez, the assemblage had
+diminished; only the copyists remained bending over their canvases. The
+painter felt anew the influence of the great master. He admired his
+wonderful art, feeling at the same time the intense, historical sadness
+that seemed to emanate from all of his work. Poor Don Diego! He was born
+in the most melancholy period of Spanish history. His sane realism was
+fitted to immortalize the human form in all its naked beauty and fate
+had provided him a period when women looked like turtles, with their
+heads and shoulders peeping out between the double shell of their
+inflated gowns, and when men had a sacerdotal stiffness, raising their
+dark, ill-washed heads above their gloomy garb. He had painted what he
+saw; fear and hypocrisy were reflected in the eyes of that world. In the
+jesters, fools and humpbacks immortalized by Don Diego was revealed the
+forced merriment of a dying nation that must needs find distraction in
+the monstrous and absurd. The hypochondriac temper of a monarchy weak
+in body and fettered in spirit by the terrors of hell, lived in all
+those masterpieces, that inspired at once admiration and sadness. Alas
+for the artistic treasures wasted in immortalizing a period which
+without Velasquez would have fallen into utter oblivion!
+
+Renovales thought, too, of the man, comparing with a feeling of remorse
+the great painter's life with the princely existence of the modern
+masters. Ah, the munificence of kings, their protection of artists, that
+people talked about in their enthusiasm for the past! He thought of the
+peaceful Don Diego and his salary of three _pesetas_ as court painter,
+which he received only at rare intervals; of his glorious name figuring
+among those of jesters and barbers in the list of members of the king's
+household, forced to accept the office of appraiser of masonry to
+improve his situation, of the shame and humiliation of his last years in
+order to gain the Cross of Santiago, denying as a crime before the
+tribunal of the Orders that he had received money for his pictures,
+declaring with servile pride his position as servant of the king, as
+though this title were superior to the glory of an artist. Happy days of
+the present, blessed revolution of modern life, that dignifies the
+artist, and places him under the protection of the public, an impersonal
+sovereign that leaves the creator of beauty free and ends by even
+following him in new-created paths!
+
+Renovales went up to the central gallery in search of another of his
+favorites. The works of Goya filled a large space on both walls. On one
+side the portraits of the kings and queens of the Bourbon decadence;
+heads of monarchs, or princes, crushed under their white wigs; sharp
+feminine eyes, bloodless faces, with their hair combed in the form of a
+tower. The two great painters had coincided in their lives with the
+moral downfall of two dynasties. In the Hall of Velasquez the thin,
+bony, fair-haired kings, of monastic grace and anaemic pallor, with
+their protruding under-jaws, and in their eyes an expression of doubt
+and fear for the salvation of their souls. Here, the corpulent, clumsy
+monarchs, with their huge, heavy noses, fatefully pendulous, as though
+by some mysterious relation they were dragging on the brain, paralyzing
+its functions; their thick underlips, hanging in sensual inertia; their
+eyes, calm as those of cattle, reflecting in their tranquil light
+indifference for everything that did not directly concern their own
+well-being. The Austrians, nervous, restless, vacillating with the fever
+of insanity, riding on theatrical chargers, in dark landscapes, bounded
+by the snowy crests of the Guadarrama, as sad, cold and crystallized as
+the soul of the nation; the Bourbons, peaceful, adipose,
+resting--surfeited--on their huge calves, without any other thought than
+the hunt of the following day or the domestic intrigue that would set
+the family in dissension, deaf to the storms that thundered beyond the
+Pyrenees. The one, surrounded by brutal-faced imbeciles, by gloomy
+pettifoggers, by Infantas with childish faces and the hollow skirts of a
+Virgin's image on an altar; the others bringing as a merry, unconcerned
+retinue, a rabble clad in bright colors, wrapped in scarlet capes or
+lace mantillas, crowned with ornamental combs or masculine hats--a race
+that, without knowing it, was sapping its heroism in picnics at the
+Canal or in grotesque amusements. The lash of invasion aroused them from
+their century-long infancy. The same great artist that for many years
+had portrayed the simple thoughtlessness of this gay people, showy and
+light-hearted as a comic-opera chorus, afterwards painted them, knife in
+hand, attacking the Mamelukes with the agility of monkeys, felling those
+Egyptian centaurs under their slashes, blackened with the smoke of a
+hundred battles, or dying with theatrical pride by the light of a
+lantern in the gloomy solitude of Moncloa, shot by the invaders.
+
+Renovales admired the tragic atmosphere of the canvas before him. The
+executioners hid their faces, leaning on their guns; they were the blind
+executors of fate, a nameless force, and before them rose the pile of
+palpitating, bloody flesh; the dead with strips of flesh torn off by the
+bullets, showing reddish holes, the living with folded arms, defying the
+murderers in a tongue they could not understand, or covering their faces
+with their hands, as though this instinctive movement could save them
+from the lead. A whole people died, to be born again. And beside this
+picture of horror and heroism, in another close to it, he saw Palafox,
+the Leonidas of Saragossa, mounted on horseback, with his stylish
+whiskers and the arrogance of a blacksmith in a captain-general's
+uniform, having in his bearing something of the appearance of a popular
+chieftain, holding in one hand, gloved in buckskin, the curved saber,
+and in the other the reins of his stocky, big-bellied steed.
+
+Renovales thought that art is like light, which acquires color and
+brightness from the objects it touches. Goya had passed through a stormy
+period; he had been a spectator of the resurrection of the soul of the
+people and his painting contained the tumultuous life, the heroic fury
+that you look for in vain in the canvases of that other genius, tied as
+he was to the monotonous existence of the palace, unbroken except by the
+news of distant wars in which they had little interest and whose
+victories, too late to be useful, had the coldness of doubt.
+
+The painter turned away from the dames of Goya, clad in white cambric,
+with their rosebud mouths and with their hair done up like a turban, to
+concentrate his attention on a nude figure, the luminous gleam of whose
+flesh seemed to throw the adjacent canvases in a shadow. He
+contemplated it closely for a long time, bending over the railing till
+the brim of his hat almost touched the canvas. Then he gradually moved
+away, without ceasing to look at it, until, at last, he sat down on a
+bench, still facing the picture with his eyes fixed upon it.
+
+"Goya's _Maja_. The _Maja Desnuda!_"
+
+He spoke aloud, without realizing it, as if his words were the
+inevitable outburst of the thoughts that rushed into his mind and seemed
+to pass back and forth behind the lenses of his eyes. His expressions of
+admiration were in different tones, marking a descending scale of
+memories.
+
+The painter looked with delight at the gracefully delicate form,
+luminous, as though within it burned the flame of life, showing through
+the pearl-pale flesh. A shadow, scarcely perceptible, veiled in mystery
+of her femininity; the light traced a bright spot on her smoothly
+rounded knees and once more the shadow reached down to her tiny feet
+with their delicate toes, rosy and babyish.
+
+The woman was small, graceful, and dainty; the Spanish Venus with no
+more flesh than was necessary to cover her supple, shapely frame with
+softly curving outlines. Her amber eyes that flashed slyly, were
+disconcerting with their gaze; her mouth had in its graceful corners the
+fleeting touch of an eternal smile; on her cheeks, elbows and feet the
+pink tone showed the transparency and the moist brilliancy of those
+shells that open their mysterious colors in the secret depths of the
+sea.
+
+"Goya's _Maja_. The _Maja Desnuda!_"
+
+He no longer said these words aloud, but his thought and his expression
+repeated them, his smile was their echo.
+
+Renovales was not alone. From time to time groups of visitors passed
+back and forth between his eyes and the picture, talking loudly. The
+tread of heavy feet shook the wooden floor. It was noon and the
+bricklayers from nearby buildings were taking advantage of the noon hour
+to explore those salons as if it were a new world, delighting in the
+warm air of the furnaces. As they went, they left footprints of plaster
+on the floor; they called out to each other to share their admiration
+before a picture; they were impatient to take it all in at a single
+glance; they waxed enthusiastic over the warriors in their shining armor
+or the elaborate uniforms of olden times. The cleverest among them
+served as guides to their companions, driving them impatiently. They had
+been there the day before. Go ahead! There was still a lot to see! And
+they ran toward the inner halls with the breathless curiosity of men who
+tread on new ground and expect something marvelous to rise before their
+steps.
+
+Amid this rush of simple admirers there passed, too, some groups of
+Spanish ladies. All did the same thing before Goya's work, as if they
+had been previously coached. They went from picture to picture,
+commenting on the fashions of the past, feeling a sort of longing for
+the curious old crinolines and the broad mantillas with the high combs.
+Suddenly they became serious, drew their lips together and started at a
+quick pace for the end of the gallery. Instinct warned them. Their
+restless eyes felt hurt by the nude in the distance; they seemed to
+scent the famous _Maja_ before they saw her and they kept on--erect,
+with severe countenances, just as if they were annoyed by some rude
+fellow's advances in the street--passing in front of the picture without
+turning their faces, without seeing even the adjacent pictures nor
+stopping till they reached the Hall of Murillo.
+
+It was the hatred for the nude, the Christian, century-old abomination
+of Nature and truth, that rose instinctively to protest against the
+toleration of such horrors in a public building which was peopled with
+saints, kings and ascetics.
+
+Renovales worshiped the canvas with ardent devotion, and placed it in a
+class by itself. It was the first manifestation in Spanish history of
+art that was free from scruples, unhampered by prejudice. Three
+centuries of painting, several generations of glorious names, succeeded
+one another with wonderful fertility; but not until Goya had the Spanish
+brush dared to trace the form of a woman's body, the divine nakedness
+that among all peoples has been the first inspiration of nascent art.
+Renovales remembered another nude, the Venus of Velasquez, preserved
+abroad. But that work had not been spontaneous; it was a commission of
+the monarch who, at the same time that he was paying foreigners lavishly
+for their studies in the nude, wished to have a similar canvas by his
+court-painter.
+
+Religious oppression had obscured art for centuries. Human beauty
+terrified the great artists, who painted with a cross on their breasts
+and a rosary on their sword-hilts. Bodies were hidden under the stiff,
+heavy folds of sackcloth or the grotesque, courtly crinoline, and the
+painter never ventured to guess what was beneath them, looking at the
+model, as the devout worshiper contemplates the hollow mantle of the
+Virgin, not knowing whether it contains a body or three sticks to hold
+up the head. The joy of life was a sin. In vain a sun fairer than that
+of Venice shone on Spanish soil, futile was the light that burned upon
+the land with a brighter glow than that of Flanders: Spanish art was
+dark, lifeless, sober, even after it knew the works of Titian. The
+Renaissance, that in the rest of the world worshiped the nude as the
+supreme work of Nature, was covered here with the monk's cowl or the
+beggar's rags. The shining landscapes were dark and gloomy when they
+reached the canvas; under the brush the land of the sun appeared with a
+gray sky and grass that was a mournful green; the heads had a monkish
+gravity. The artist placed in his pictures not what surrounded him, but
+what he had within him, a piece of his soul--and his soul was fettered
+by the fear of dangers in the present life and torments in the life to
+come; it was black--black with sadness, as if it were dyed in the soot
+of the fires of the autos-de-fe.
+
+That naked woman with her curly head resting on her folded arms was the
+awakening of an art that had lived in isolation. The slight frame, that
+scarcely rested on the green divan and the fine lace cushions, seemed on
+the point of rising in the air with the mighty impulse of resurrection.
+
+Renovales thought of the two masters, equally great, and still so
+different. One had the imposing majesty of famous monuments--serene,
+correct, cold, filling the horizon of history with their colossal mass,
+growing old in glory without the centuries opening the least crack in
+their marble walls. On all sides the same facade--noble, symmetrical,
+calm, without the vagaries of caprice. It was reason--solid,
+well-balanced, alien to enthusiasm and weakness, without feverish haste.
+The other was as great as a mountain, with the fantastic disorder of
+Nature, covered with tortuous inequalities. On one side the wild, barren
+cliff; beyond, the glen, covered with blossoming heath; below, the
+garden with its perfumes and birds; on the heights, the crown of dark
+clouds, heavy with thunder and lightning. It was imagination in
+unbridled career, with breathless halts and new flights--its brow in the
+infinite and its feet implanted on earth.
+
+The life of Don Diego was summed up in these words: "He had painted."
+That was his whole biography. Never in his travels in Spain and Italy
+did he feel curious to see anything but pictures. In the court of the
+Poet-king, he had vegetated amid gallantries and masquerades, calm as a
+monk of painting, always standing before his canvas and model--to-day a
+jester, to-morrow a little Infanta--without any other desire than to
+rise in rank among the members of the royal household, to see a cross of
+red cloth sewed on his black jerkin. He was a lofty soul, enclosed in a
+phlegmatic body that never tormented him with nervous desires nor
+disturbed the calm of his work with violent passions. When he died the
+good Dona Juana, his wife, died too, as though they sought each other,
+unable to remain apart after their long, uneventful pilgrimage through
+the world.
+
+Goya "had lived." His life was that of the nobleman-artist--a stormy
+novel, full of mysterious amours. His pupils, on parting the curtains of
+his studio, saw the silk of royal skirts on their master's knees. The
+dainty duchesses of the period resorted to that robust Aragonese of
+rough, manly gallantry to have him paint their cheeks, laughing like mad
+at these intimate touches. When he contemplated some divine beauty on
+the tumbled bed, he transferred her form to the canvas by an
+irresistible impulse, an imperious necessity of reproducing beauty; and
+the legend that floated about the Spanish artist connected an
+illustrious name with all the beauties whom his brush immortalized.
+
+To paint without fear or prejudice, to take delight in reproducing on
+canvas the glory of the nude, the lustrous amber of woman's flesh with
+its pale roses like a sea-shell, was Renovales' desire and envy; to live
+like the famous Don Francisco--a free bird with restless, shining
+plumage in the midst of the monotony of the human barn-yard; in his
+passions, in his diversions, in his tastes, to be different from the
+majority of men, since he was already different from them in his way of
+appreciating life.
+
+But, ah! his existence was like that of Don Diego--unbroken, monotonous,
+laid out by level in a straight line. He painted, but he did not live.
+People praised his work for the accuracy with which he reproduced
+Nature, for the gleam of light, for the indefinable color of the
+atmosphere, and the exterior of things; but something was lacking,
+something that stirred within him and fought in vain to leap the vulgar
+barriers of daily existence.
+
+The memory of the romantic life of Goya made him think of his own life.
+People called him a master; they bought everything he painted at good
+prices, especially if it was in accordance with some one else's tastes
+and contrary to his artistic desire; he enjoyed a calm existence, full
+of comforts; in his studio, almost as splendid as a palace, the facade
+of which was reproduced in the illustrated magazines, he had a wife who
+was convinced of his genius and a daughter who was almost a woman and
+who made the troop of his intimate pupils stammer with embarrassment.
+The only evidences of his Bohemian past that remained were his soft felt
+hats, his long beard, his tangled hair and a certain carelessness in his
+dress; but when his position as a "national celebrity" demanded it, he
+took out of his wardrobe a dress suit with the lapel covered with the
+insignia of honorary orders and played his part in official receptions.
+He had thousands of dollars in the bank. In his studio, palette in hand,
+he conferred with his broker, discussing what sort of investments he
+ought to make with the year's profits. His name awakened no surprise or
+aversion in high society, where it was fashionable for ladies to have
+their portraits painted by him.
+
+In the early days he had provoked scandal and protests by his boldness
+in color and his revolutionary way of seeing Nature, but there was not
+connected with his name the least offence against the conventions of
+society. His women were women of the people, picturesque and repugnant;
+the only flesh that he had shown on his canvases was that of a sweaty
+laborer or the chubby child. He was an honored master, who cultivated
+his stupendous ability with the same calm that he showed in his business
+affairs.
+
+What was lacking in his life? Ah! Renovales smiled ironically. His whole
+life suddenly came to mind in a tumultuous rush of memories. Once more
+he fixed his glance on that woman, shining white like a pearl amphora,
+with her arms above her head, her breasts erect and triumphant, her eyes
+resting on him, as if she had known him for many years, and he repeated
+mentally with an expression of bitterness and dejection:
+
+"Goya's _Maja_, the _Maja Desnuda_!"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+As Mariano Renovales recalled the first years of his life, his memory,
+always sensitive to exterior impressions, called up the ceaseless clang
+of hammers. From the rising of the sun till the earth began to darken
+with the shadows of twilight the iron sang or groaned on the anvil,
+jarring the walls of the house and the floor of the garret, where
+Mariano used to play, lying on the floor at the feet of a pale, sickly
+woman with serious, deep-set eyes, who frequently dropped her sewing to
+kiss the little one with sudden violence, as though she feared she would
+not see him again.
+
+Those tireless hammers that had accompanied Mariano's birth, made him
+jump out of bed as soon as day broke and go down to the shop to warm
+himself beside the glowing forge. His father, a good-natured
+Cyclops--hairy and blackened--walked back and forth, turning over the
+irons, picking up files, giving orders to his assistants with loud
+shouts, in order to be heard in the din of the hammering. Two sturdy
+fellows, stripped to the waist, swung their arms, panting over the
+anvil, and the iron--now red, now golden--leaped in bright showers,
+scattered in crackling sprays, peopling the black atmosphere of the shop
+with a swarm of fiery flies that died away in the soot of the corners.
+
+"Take care, little one!" said the father, protecting his delicate
+curly-haired head with one of his great hands.
+
+The little fellow felt attracted by the colors of the glowing iron, till
+with the thoughtlessness of childhood he sometimes tried to pick up the
+fragments that glowed on the ground like fallen stars.
+
+His father would push him out of the shop, and outside the door--black
+with soot--Mariano could see stretching out below him in the flood of
+sunlight the fields with their red soil cut into geometric figures by
+stone walls; at the bottom the valley with groups of poplars bordering
+the winding, crystal stream, and before him the mountains, covered to
+the very tops with dark pine woods. The shop was in the suburbs of a
+town and from it and the villages of the valley came the jobs that
+supported the blacksmith--new axles for carts, plowshares, scythes,
+shovels, and pitchforks in need of repair.
+
+The incessant pounding of the hammers seemed to stir up the little
+fellow, inspiring him with a fever of activity, tearing him from his
+childish amusements. When he was eight years old, he used to seize the
+rope of the bellows and pull it, delighting in the shower of sparks that
+the current of air drove out of the lighted coals. The Cyclops was
+gratified at the strength of his son, robust and vigorous like all the
+men of his family, with a pair of fists that inspired a wholesome
+respect in all the village lads. He was one of his own blood. From his
+poor mother, weak and sickly, he inherited only his propensity toward
+silence and isolation that sometimes, when the fever of activity died
+out in him, kept him for hours at a time watching the fields, the sky or
+the brooks that came tumbling down over the pebbles to join the stream
+at the bottom of the valley.
+
+The boy hated school, showing a holy horror of letters. His strong hands
+shook with uncertainty when he tried to write a word. On the other hand,
+his father and the other people in the shop admired the ease with which
+he could reproduce objects in a simple, ingenuous drawing, in which no
+detail of naturalness was lacking. His pockets were always full of bits
+of charcoal and he never saw a wall or stone that had a suggestion of
+whiteness, without at once tracing on it a copy of the objects that
+struck his eyes because of some marked peculiarity. The outside walls of
+the shop were black with little Mariano's drawings. Along the walls ran
+the pigs of Saint Anthony, with their puckered snouts and twisted tails,
+that wandered through the village and were supported by public charity,
+to be raffled on the festival of the saint. And in the midst of this
+stout procession stood out the profiles of the blacksmith and all the
+workmen of the shop, with an inscription beneath, that no doubt might
+arise as to their identity.
+
+"Come here, woman," the blacksmith would shout to his sick wife when he
+discovered a new sketch. "Come and see what our son has done. A devil of
+a boy!"
+
+And influenced by this enthusiasm, he no longer complained when Mariano
+ran away from school and the bellows rope to spend the whole day running
+through the valley or the village, a piece of charcoal in his hand,
+covering the rocks of the mountain and the house walls with black lines,
+to the despair of the neighbors. In the tavern in the Plaza Mayor he had
+traced the heads of the most constant customers, and the innkeeper
+pointed them out proudly, forbidding anyone to touch the wall for fear
+the sketches would disappear. This work was a source of vanity to the
+blacksmith when Sundays, after mass, he went in to drink a glass with
+his friends. On the wall of the rectory he had traced a Virgin, before
+which the most pious old women in the village stopped with deep sighs.
+
+The blacksmith with a flush of satisfaction accepted all the praises
+that were showered on the little fellow as if they belonged in large
+part to himself. Where had that prodigy come from, when all the rest of
+his family were such brutes? And he nodded affirmatively when the
+village notables spoke of doing something for the boy. To be sure, he
+did not know what to do, but they were right; his Mariano was not
+destined to hammer iron like his father. He might become as great a
+personage as Don Rafael, a gentleman who painted saints in the capital
+of the province and was a teacher of painting in a big house, full of
+pictures, in the city. During the summer he came with his family to live
+in an estate in the valley.
+
+This Don Rafael was a man of imposing gravity; a saint with a large
+family of children, who wore a frock-coat as if it were a cassock and
+spoke with the suavity of a friar through his white beard that covered
+his thin, pink cheeks. In the village church they had a wonderful
+picture painted by him, a _Purisima_, whose soft glowing colors made the
+legs of the pious tremble. Besides, the eyes of the image had the
+marvelous peculiarity of looking straight at those who contemplated it,
+following them even though they changed position. A veritable miracle.
+It seemed impossible that that good gentleman who came up every morning
+in the summer to hear mass in the village, had painted that supernatural
+work. An Englishman had tried to buy it for its weight in gold. No one
+had seen the Englishman, but every one smiled sarcastically when they
+commented on the offer. Yes, indeed, they were likely to let the picture
+go! Let the heretics rage with all their millions. The _Purisima_ would
+stay in her chapel to the envy of the whole world--and especially of the
+neighboring villages.
+
+When the parish priest went to visit Don Rafael to speak to him about
+the blacksmith's son, the great man already knew about his ability. He
+had seen his drawings in the village; the boy had some talent and it was
+a pity not to guide him in the right path. After this came the visits
+of the blacksmith and his son, both trembling when they found themselves
+in the attic of the country house that the great painter had converted
+into a studio, seeing close at hand the pots of color, the oily palette,
+the brushes and those pale blue canvases on which the rosy, chubby
+cheeks of the cherubim or the ecstatic face of the Mother of God were
+beginning to assume form.
+
+At the end of the summer the good blacksmith decided to follow Don
+Rafael's advice. As long as he was so good as to consent to helping the
+boy, he was not going to be the one to interfere with his good fortune.
+The shop gave him enough to live on. All it meant was to work a few
+years longer, to support himself till the end of his life beside the
+anvil, without an assistant or a successor. His son was born to be
+somebody, and it was a serious sin to stop his progress by scorning the
+help of his good protector.
+
+His mother, who constantly grew weaker and more sickly, cried as if the
+journey to the capital of the province were to the end of the world.
+
+"Good-by, my boy. I shall never see you again."
+
+And in truth it was the last time that Mariano saw that pale face with
+its great expressionless eyes, now almost wiped out of his memory like a
+whitish spot in which, in spite of all his efforts, he could not succeed
+in restoring the outline of the features.
+
+In the city his life was radically different. Then for the first time he
+understood what it was his hands were striving for as they moved the
+charcoal over the whitewashed walls. Art was revealed to his eyes in
+those silent afternoons, passed in the convent where the provincial
+museum was situated, while his master, Don Rafael, argued with other
+gentlemen in the professor's hall, or signed papers in the secretary's
+office.
+
+Mariano lived at his protector's house, at once his servant and his
+pupil. He carried letters to the dean and the other canons, who were
+friends of his master and who accompanied him on his walks or spent
+social evenings in his studio. More than once he visited the locutories
+of nunneries, to deliver through the heavy gratings presents from Don
+Rafael to certain black and white shadows, which attracted by this
+sturdy young country boy, and aware that he meant to be a painter,
+overwhelmed him with the eager questions born of their seclusion. Before
+he went away they would hand him, through the revolving window, cakes
+and candied lemons or some other goody, and then, with a word of advice,
+would say good-by in their thin, soft voices, which sifted through the
+iron of the gratings.
+
+"Be a good boy, little Mariano. Study, pray. Be a good Christian, the
+Lord will protect you and perhaps you will get to be as great a painter
+as Don Rafael, who is one of the first in the world."
+
+How the master laughed at the memory of the childish simplicity that
+made him see in his master the most marvelous painter on earth!...
+Mornings, when he attended the classes in the School of Fine Arts, he
+grew angry at his comrades, a disrespectful rabble, brought up in the
+streets, sons of mechanics, who, as soon as the professor turned his
+back, pelted each other with the crumbs of bread meant to wipe out their
+drawings, and cursed Don Rafael, calling him a "Christer" and a
+"Jesuit."
+
+The afternoon Mariano passed in the studio, at his master's side. How
+excited he was the first time he placed a palette in his hand and
+allowed him to copy on an old canvas a child St. John which he had
+finished for a society!... While the boy with his forehead wrinkled in
+his eagerness, tried to imitate his master's work, he listened to the
+good advice that the master gave him without looking up from the canvas
+over which his angelic brush was running.
+
+Painting must be religious; the first pictures in the world had been
+inspired by religion; outside of it, life offered nothing but base
+materialism, loathsome sins. Painting must be ideal, beautiful. It must
+always represent pretty subjects, reproduce things as they ought to be,
+not as they really are, and above all, look up to heaven, since there is
+true life, not on this earth, a valley of tears. Mariano must modify his
+instincts--that was his master's advice--must lose his fondness for
+drawing coarse subjects--people as he saw them, animals in all their
+material brutality, landscapes in the same form as his eyes gazed upon.
+
+He must have idealism. Many painters were almost saints; only thus could
+they reflect celestial beauty in the faces of their madonnas. And poor
+Mariano strove to be ideal, to catch a little of that beatific serenity
+which surrounded his master.
+
+Little by little he came to understand the methods which Don Rafael
+employed to create these masterpieces which called forth cries of
+admiration from his circle of canons and the rich ladies that gave him
+commissions for pictures. When he intended to begin one of his
+_Purisimas_, which were slowly invading the churches and convents of the
+province, he arose early and returned to his studio after mass and
+communion. In this way he felt an inner strength, a calm enthusiasm,
+and, if he felt depressed in the midst of the work, he once more had
+recourse to this inspiring medicine.
+
+The artist, besides, must be pure. He had taken a vow of chastity after
+he had reached the age of fifty, somewhat late to be sure, but it was
+not because he had not known before this certain means of reaching the
+perfect idealism of a celestial painter. His wife, who had grown old in
+her countless confinements, exhausted by the tiresome fidelity and
+virtue of the master, was no longer anything but the companion who gave
+the responses when he prayed his rosaries and Trisagia at night. He had
+several daughters, who weighed on his conscience like the reproachful
+memory of a disgraceful materialism, but some were already nuns and the
+others were on the way, while the idealism of the artist increased as
+these evidences of his impurity disappeared from the house and went to
+hide away in a convent where they upheld the artistic prestige of their
+father.
+
+Sometimes the great painter hesitated before a _Purisima_, which was
+always the same, as if he painted it with a stencil. Then he spoke
+mysteriously to his disciple:
+
+"Mariano, tell the gentlemen not to come to-morrow. We have a model."
+
+And when the studio was closed to the priests and the other respectable
+friends, with heavy step in came Rodriguez, a policeman, with a
+cigarette stub under his heavy bristling mustache and one hand on the
+handle of his sword. Dismissed from the gendarmerie for intoxication and
+cruelty, and finding himself without employment, by some strange chance
+he began to devote himself to serving as a painter's model. The pious
+artist, who held him in a sort of terror, nagged by his constant
+petitions, had secured for him this position as policeman, and Rodriguez
+took advantage of every opportunity to show his rough appreciation,
+slapping the master's shoulders with his great hands and blowing in his
+face, his breath redolent with nicotine and alcohol.
+
+"Don Rafael, you are my father. If anybody touches you, I'll fix him,
+whoever he is."
+
+And the ascetic artist, with a feeling of satisfaction at this
+protection, blushed and waved his hands in protest against the frankness
+of the rude fellow with his threats for the men he would "fix."
+
+He threw his helmet on the ground, handed his heavy sword to Mariano,
+and like a man that knows his duty, took out of the bottom of a chest a
+white woolen tunic and a piece of blue cloth like a cloak, placing both
+garments on his body with the skill of practice.
+
+Mariano looked at him with astonished eyes but without any temptation to
+laugh. They were mysteries of art, surprises that were reserved only for
+those who, like him, had the good fortune to live on terms of intimacy
+with the great master.
+
+"Ready, Rodriguez?" Don Rafael asked impatiently.
+
+And Rodriguez, erect in his bath robe with the blue rag hanging from his
+shoulders, clasped his hands and lifted his fierce gaze to the ceiling,
+without ceasing to suck the stub that singed his mustache. The master
+did not need the model except for the robes of the figure, to study the
+folds of the celestial garment, which must not reveal the slightest
+evidence of human contour. The possibility of copying a woman had never
+passed through his imagination. That was falling into materialism,
+glorifying the flesh, inviting temptation; Rodriguez was all he needed;
+one must be an idealist.
+
+The model continued in his mystic attitude with his body lost in the
+innumerable folds of his blue and white raiment, while under it the
+square toes of his army boots stuck out, and he held up his grotesque,
+flat head, crowned with bristling hair, coughing and choking from the
+smoke of the cigar, without ceasing to look up and without separating
+his hands clasped in an attitude of worship.
+
+Sometimes, tired out by the industrious silence of the master and the
+pupil, Rodriguez uttered a few grumbles that little by little took the
+form of words and finally developed into the story of the deeds of his
+heroic period, when he was a rural policeman and "could take a shot at
+anyone and pay for it afterward with a report." The _Purisima_ grew
+excited at these memories. His hands separated with a tremble of
+murderous joy, the carefully arranged folds were disturbed, his
+bloodshot eyes no longer looked heavenward, and with a hoarse voice he
+told of tremendous beatings he administered, of men who fell to the
+ground writhing with pain, the shooting of prisoners which afterwards
+were reported as attempts to escape; and to give greater relief to this
+autobiography which he declaimed with bestial pride, he sprinkled his
+words with interjections as vulgar as they were lacking in respect for
+the first personages of the heavenly court.
+
+"Rodriguez, Rodriguez!" exclaimed the master, horror-stricken.
+
+"At your command, Don Rafael."
+
+And the _Purisima_, after passing the stub from one side of his mouth to
+the other, once more folded his hands, straightened up, showing his
+red-striped trousers under the tunic, and lost his gaze on high, smiling
+with ecstasy, as if he contemplated on the ceiling all his heroic deeds
+of which he felt so proud.
+
+Mariano was in despair before his canvas. He could never imitate his
+illustrious master. He was incapable of painting anything but what he
+saw, and his brush, after reproducing the blue and white raiment,
+stopped, hesitating at the face, calling in vain on imagination. After
+futile efforts it was the grotesque mask of Rodriguez that appeared on
+the canvas.
+
+And the pupil had a sincere admiration for the ability of Don Rafael,
+for that pale head veiled in the light of its halo, a pretty,
+expressionless face of childish beauty, which took the place of the
+policeman's fierce head in the picture.
+
+This sleight-of-hand seemed to the boy the most astounding evidence of
+art. When would he reach the easy prestidigitation of his master!
+
+With time the difference between Don Rafael and his pupil became more
+marked. At school his comrades gathered around him, recognizing his
+superiority and praising his drawings. Some professors, enemies of his
+master, lamented that such talent should be lost beside that
+"saint-painter." Don Rafael was surprised at what Mariano did outside of
+his studio--figures and landscapes, directly observed which, according
+to him, breathed the brutality of life.
+
+His circle of serious gentlemen began to discover some merit in the
+pupil.
+
+"He will never reach your height, Don Rafael," they said. "He lacks
+unction, he has no idealism, he will never paint a good Virgin--but as a
+worldly painter he has a future."
+
+The master, who loved the boy for his submissive nature and the purity
+of his habits, tried in vain to make him follow the right way. If he
+would only imitate him, his fortune was made. He would die without a
+successor and his studio and his fame would be his. The boy only had to
+see how, little by little, like a good ant of the Lord, the master had
+gathered together a fair sized future with his brush. By virtue of his
+idealism, he had his country house there in the village, and no end of
+estates, the tenants of which came and visited him in his studio,
+carrying on endless discussions over the payment and amount of the rents
+in front of the poetic Virgins. The Church was poor because of the
+impiety of the times, it could not pay as generously as in other
+centuries, but commissions were numerous, and a Virgin in all her
+purity was a matter of only three days--but young Renovales made a
+troubled, wry face, as if a painful sacrifice were demanded of him.
+
+"I can't, Master. I'm an idiot. I don't know how to invent things. I
+paint only what I see."
+
+And when he began to see naked bodies in the so-called "life" class he
+devoted himself zealously to this study, as if the flesh caused in him
+the most violent intoxication. Don Rafael was appalled by finding in the
+corners of his house sketches that portrayed shameful nudes in all their
+reality. Besides, the progress of his pupil caused him some uneasiness;
+he saw in his painting a vigor that he himself had never had. He even
+noted some falling-off in his circle of admirers. The good canons, as
+always, admired his Virgins, but some of them had their portraits
+painted by Mariano, praising the skill of his brush.
+
+One day he said to his pupil, firmly:
+
+"You know that I love you as I would a son, Mariano, but you are wasting
+your time with me. I cannot teach you anything. Your place is somewhere
+else. I thought you might go to Madrid. There you will find men of your
+stamp."
+
+His mother was dead; his father was still in the blacksmith shop, and
+when he saw him come home with several duros, the pay for portraits he
+had made, he looked on this sum as a fortune. It did not seem possible
+that anyone would give money in exchange for colors. A letter from Don
+Rafael convinced him. Since that wise gentleman advised that his son
+should go to Madrid, he must agree.
+
+"Go to Madrid, my boy, and try to make money soon, for your father is
+old and will not always be able to help you."
+
+At the age of sixteen, Renovales landed in Madrid and finding himself
+alone, with only his wishes for his guide, devoted himself zealously to
+his work. He spent the morning in the Museo del Prado, copying all the
+heads in Velasquez's pictures. He felt that till then he had been blind.
+Besides, he worked in an attic studio with some other companions and
+evenings painted water-colors. By selling these and some copies, he
+managed to eke out the small allowance his father sent him.
+
+He recalled with a sort of homesickness those years of poverty, of real
+misery, the cold nights in his wretched bed, the irritating
+meals--Heaven knows what was in them--eaten in a bar-room near the
+Teatro Real; the discussions in the corner of a cafe, under the hostile
+glances of the waiters who were provoked that a dozen long-haired youths
+should occupy several tables and order all together only three coffees
+and many bottles of water.
+
+The light-hearted young fellows stood their misery without difficulty
+and, to make up for it, what a fill of fancies they had, what a glorious
+feast of hopes! A new discovery every day. Renovales ran through the
+realm of art like a wild colt, seeing new horizons spreading out before
+him, and his career caused an outburst of scandal that amounted to
+premature celebrity. The old men said that he was the only boy who "had
+the stuff in him"; his comrades declared that he was a "real painter,"
+and in their iconoclastic enthusiasm compared his inexperienced works
+with those of the recognized old masters--"poor humdrum artists" on
+whose bald pates they felt obliged to vent their spleen in order to show
+the superiority of the younger generation.
+
+Renovales' candidacy for the fellowship at Rome caused a veritable
+revolution. The younger set, who swore by him and considered him their
+illustrious captain, broke out in threats, fearful lest the "old boys"
+should sacrifice their idol.
+
+When at last his manifest superiority won him the fellowship, there were
+banquets in his honor, articles in the papers, his picture was published
+in the illustrated magazines, and even the old blacksmith made a trip to
+Madrid, to breathe with tearful emotion part of the incense that was
+burned for his son.
+
+In Rome a cruel disappointment awaited Renovales. His countrymen
+received him rather coldly. The younger men looked on him as a rival and
+waited for his next works with the hope of a failure; the old men who
+lived far from their fatherland examined him with malignant curiosity.
+"And so that big chap was the blacksmith's son, who caused so much
+disturbance among the ignorant people at home!... Madrid was not Rome.
+They would soon see what that _genius_ could do!"
+
+Renovales did nothing in the first months of his stay in Rome. He
+answered with a shrug of his shoulders those who asked for his pictures
+with evident innuendo. He had come there not to paint but to study; that
+was what the State was paying him for. And he spent more than half a
+year drawing, always drawing in the famous art galleries, where, pencil
+in hand, he studied the famous works. The paint boxes remained unopened
+in one corner of the studio.
+
+Before long he came to detest the great city, because of the life the
+artists led in it. What was the use of fellowships? People studied less
+there than in other places. Rome was not a school, it was a market. The
+painting merchants set up their business there, attracted by the
+gathering of artists. All--old and beginners, famous and unknown--felt
+the temptation of money; all were seduced by the easy comforts of life,
+producing works for sale, painting pictures in accordance with the
+suggestions of some German Jews who frequented the studios, designating
+the sizes and the types that were in style in order to spread them over
+Europe and America.
+
+When Renovales visited the studios, he saw nothing but _genre_ pictures,
+sometimes gentlemen in long dress coats, others tattered Moors or
+Calabrian peasants. They were pretty, faultless paintings, for which
+they used as models a manikin, or the families of _ciociari_ whom they
+hired every morning in the Piazza di Espagna beside the Sealinata of the
+Trinity; the everlasting country-woman, swarthy and black-eyed, with
+great hoops in her ears and wearing a green skirt, a black waist and a
+white head-dress caught up on her hair with large pins; the usual old
+man with sandals, a woolen cloak and a pointed hat with spiral bands on
+his snowy head that was a fitting model for the Eternal Father. The
+artists judged each other's ability by the number of thousand lire they
+took in during a year; they spoke with respect of the famous masters who
+made a fortune out of the millionaires of Paris and Chicago for
+easel-pictures that nobody saw. Renovales was indignant. This sort of
+art was almost like that of his first master, even if it was "worldly"
+as Don Rafael had said. And that was what they sent him to Rome for!
+
+Unpopular with his countrymen because of his brusque ways, his rude
+tongue and his honesty, which made him refuse all commissions from the
+art merchants, he sought the society of artists from other countries.
+Among the cosmopolitan group of young painters who were quartered in
+Rome, Renovales soon became popular.
+
+His energy, his exuberant spirits, made him a congenial, merry comrade,
+when he appeared in the studios of the Via di Babuino or in the
+chocolate rooms and cafes of the Corso, where the artists of different
+nationalities gathered in friendly company.
+
+Mariano, at the age of twenty, was an athletic fellow, a worthy scion
+of the man who was pounding iron from morning till night in a far away
+corner of Spain. One day an English youth, a friend of his, read him a
+page of Ruskin in his honor. "The plastic arts are essentially
+athletic." An invalid, a half paralyzed man, might be a great poet, a
+celebrated musician, but to be a Michael Angelo or a Titian a man must
+have not merely a privileged soul, but a vigorous body. Leonardo da
+Vinci broke a horseshoe in his hands; the sculptors of the Renaissance
+worked huge blocks of marble with their titanic arms or chipped off the
+bronze with their gravers; the great painters were often architects and,
+covered with dust, moved huge masses. Renovales listened thoughtfully to
+the words of the great English aestheticist. He, too, was a strong soul
+in an athlete's body.
+
+The appetites of his youth never went beyond the manly intoxications of
+strength and movement. Attracted by the abundance of models which Rome
+offered, he often undressed a _ciociara_ in his studio, delighting in
+drawing the forms of her body. He laughed, like the big giant that he
+was, he spoke to her with the same freedom as if she were one of the
+poor women that came out to stop him at night as he returned alone to
+the Academy of Spain, but when the work was over and she was
+dressed--out with her! He had the chastity of strong men. He worshiped
+the flesh, but only to copy its lines. The animal contact, the chance
+meeting, without love, without attraction, with the inner reserve of two
+people who do not know each other and who look on each other with
+suspicion, filled him with shame. What he wanted to do was to study, and
+women only served as a hindrance in great undertakings. He consumed the
+surplus of his energy in athletic exercise. After one of his feats of
+strength, which filled his comrades with enthusiasm, he would come in
+fresh, serene, indifferent, as though he were coming out of a bath. He
+fenced with the French painters of the Villa Medici; learned to box with
+Englishmen and Americans; organized, with some German artists,
+excursions to a grove near Rome, which were talked about for days in the
+cafes of the Corso. He drank countless healths with his companions to
+the Kaiser whom he did not know and for whom he did not care a rap. He
+would thunder in his noisy voice the traditional _Gaudeamus Igitur_ and
+finally would catch two models of the party around the waist and with
+his arms stretched out like a cross carry them through the woods till he
+dropped them on the grass as if they were feathers. Afterwards he would
+smile with satisfaction at the admiration of those good Germans, many of
+them sickly and near-sighted, who compared him with Siegfried and the
+other muscular heroes of their warlike mythology.
+
+In the Carnival season, when the Spaniards organized a cavalcade of the
+Quixote, he undertook to represent the knight Pentapolin--"him of the
+rolled-up sleeves,"--and in the Corso there were applause and cries of
+admiration for the huge biceps that the knight-errant, erect on his
+horse, revealed. When the spring nights came, the artists marched in a
+procession across the city to the Jewish quarter to buy the first
+artichokes--the popular dish in Rome, in the preparation of which an old
+Hebrew woman was famous. Renovales went at the head of the
+_carciofalatta_, bearing the banner, starting the songs which were
+alternated with the cries of all sorts of animals; and his comrades
+marched behind him, reckless and insolent under the protection of such a
+chieftain. As long as Mariano was with them there was no danger. They
+told the story that in the alleys of the Trastevere he had given a
+deadly beating to two bullies of the district, after taking away their
+stilettos.
+
+Suddenly the athlete shut himself up in the Academy and did not come
+down to the city. For several days they talked about him at the
+gatherings of artists. He was painting; an exhibition that was going to
+take place in Madrid was close at hand and he wanted to take to it a
+picture to justify his fellowship. He kept the door of his studio closed
+to everyone, he did not permit comment nor advice, the canvas would
+appear just as he conceived it. His comrades soon forgot him and
+Renovales ended his work in seclusion, and left for his country with it.
+
+It was a complete success, the first important step on the road that was
+to lead him to fame. Now he remembered with shame, with remorse, the
+glorious uproar his picture "The Victory of Pavia" stirred up. People
+crowded in front of the huge canvas, forgetting the rest of the
+Exhibition. And as, at that time, the Government was strong, the Cortes
+was closed and there was no serious accident in any of the bull-rings,
+the newspapers, for lack of any more lively event, hastened in cheap
+rivalry to reproduce the picture, to talk about it, publishing portraits
+of the author, profiles, as well as front views, large and small,
+expatiating on his life in Rome and his eccentricities, and recalled
+with tears of emotion the poor old man who far away in his village was
+pounding iron, hardly knowing of his son's glory.
+
+With one bound Renovales passed from obscurity to the light of
+apotheosis. The older men whose duty it was to judge his work became
+benevolent and extended kindly sympathy. The little tiger was getting
+tame. Renovales had seen the world and now he was coming back to the
+good traditions; he was going to be a painter like the rest. His picture
+had portions that were like Velasquez, fragments worthy of Goya, corners
+that recalled El Greco; there was everything in it, except Renovales,
+and this amalgam of reminiscences was its chief merit, what attracted
+general applause and won it the first medal.
+
+A magnificent debut it was. A dowager duchess, a great protectress of
+the arts, who never bought a picture or a statue but who entertained at
+her table painters and sculptors of renown, finding in this an
+inexpensive pleasure and a certain distinction as an illustrious lady,
+wished to make Renovales' acquaintance. He overcame the stand-offishness
+of his nature that kept him away from all social relations. Why should
+he not know high society? He could go wherever other men could. And he
+put on his first dress-coat, and after the banquets of the duchess,
+where his way of arguing with members of the Academy provoked peals of
+merry laughter, he visited other salons and for several weeks was the
+idol of society which, to be sure, was somewhat scandalized by his faux
+pas, but still pleased with the timidity that overcame him after his
+daring sallies. The younger set liked him because he handled a sword
+like a Saint George. Although a painter and son of a blacksmith, he was
+in every way a respectable person. The ladies flattered him with their
+most amiable smiles, hoping that the fashionable artist would honor them
+with a portrait gratis, as he had done with the duchess.
+
+In this period of high-life, always in dress clothes from seven in the
+evening, without painting anything but women who wanted to appear pretty
+and discussed gravely with the artist which gown they should put on to
+serve as a model, Renovales met his wife Josephina.
+
+The first time that he saw her among so many ladies of arrogant bearing
+and striking presence, he felt attracted towards her by force of
+contrast. The bashfulness, the modesty, the insignificance of the girl
+impressed him. She was small, her face offered no other beauty than that
+of youth, her body had the charm of delicacy. Like himself, the poor
+girl was there out of a sort of condescendence on the part of the
+others; she seemed to be there by sufferance and she shrank in it, as if
+afraid of attracting attention, Renovales always saw her in the same
+evening gown somewhat old, with that appearance of weariness which a
+garment constantly made over to follow the course of the fashions is
+wont to acquire. The gloves, the flowers, the ribbons had a sort of
+sadness in their freshness, as if they betrayed the sacrifices, the
+domestic exertions it had taken to procure them. She was on intimate
+terms with all the girls who made a triumphal entrance into the
+drawing-rooms, inspiring praise and envy with their new toilettes; her
+mother, a majestic lady, with a big nose and gold glasses, treated the
+ladies of the noblest families with familiarity; but in spite of this
+intimacy there was apparent around the mother and daughter the gap of
+somewhat disdainful affection, in which commiseration bore no small
+part. They were poor. The father had been a diplomat of some distinction
+who, at his death, left his wife no other source of income than the
+widow's pension. Two sons were abroad as attaches of an embassy,
+struggling with the scantiness of their salary and the demands of their
+position. The mother and daughter lived in Madrid, chained to the
+society in which they were born, fearing to abandon it, as if that would
+be equivalent to a degradation, remaining during the day in a
+fourth-floor apartment, furnished with the remnants of their past
+opulence, making unheard-of sacrifices in order to be able in the
+evening to rub elbows worthily with those who had been their equals.
+
+Some relative of Dona Emilia, the mother, contributed to her support,
+not with money (never that!) but by loaning her the surplus of their
+luxury, that she and her daughter might maintain a pale appearance of
+comfort.
+
+Some of them loaned them their carriage on certain days, so that they
+might drive through the Castellana and the Retiro, bowing to their
+friends as the carriages passed; others sent them their box at the Opera
+on evenings when the bill was not a brilliant one. Their pity made them
+remember them, too, when they sent out invitations to birthday dinners,
+afternoon teas, and the like. "We mustn't forget the Torrealtas, poor
+things." And the next day, the society reporters included in the list of
+those present at the function "the charming Senorita de Torrealta and
+her distinguished mother, the widow of the famous diplomat of
+imperishable memory," and Dona Emilia, forgetting her situation,
+fancying she was in the good old times, went to everything, in the same
+black gown, annoying with her "my dears" and her gossip the great ladies
+whose maids were richer and ate better than she and her daughter. If
+some old gentleman took refuge beside her, the diplomat's wife tried to
+overwhelm him with the majesty of her recollections. "When we were
+ambassadors in Stockholm." "When my friend Eugenie was empress...."
+
+The daughter, endowed with her instinctive girlish timidity, seemed
+better to realize her position. She would remain seated among the older
+ladies, only rarely venturing to join the other girls who had been her
+boarding-school companions and who now treated her condescendingly,
+looking on her as they would upon a governess who had been raised to
+their station, out of remembrance for the past. Her mother was annoyed
+at her timidity. She ought to dance a lot, be lively and bold, like the
+other girls, crack jokes, even if they were doubtful, that the men might
+repeat them and give her the reputation of being a wit. It was
+incredible that with the bringing up she had had, she should be so
+insignificant. The idea! The daughter of a great man about whom people
+used to crowd as soon as he entered the first salons in Europe! A girl
+who had been educated at the school of the Sacred Heart in Paris, who
+spoke English, a little German, and spent the day reading when she did
+not have to clean a pair of gloves or make over a dress! Didn't she want
+to get married? Was she so well satisfied with that fourth-story
+apartment, that wretched cell so unworthy of their name?
+
+Josephina smiled sadly. Get married! She never would get to that in the
+society they frequented. Everyone knew they were poor. The young men
+thronged the drawing-rooms in search of women with money. If by chance
+one of them did come up to her, attracted by her pale beauty, it was
+only to whisper to her shameful suggestions while they danced; to
+propose uncompromising engagements, friendly relations with a prudence
+modeled on the English, flirtations that had no result.
+
+Renovales did not realize how his friendship with Josephina began.
+Perhaps it was the contrast between himself and the little woman who
+hardly came up to his shoulder and who seemed about fifteen when she was
+already past twenty. Her soft voice with its slight lisp came to his
+ears like a caress. He laughed when he thought of the possibility of
+embracing that graceful, slender form; it would break in pieces in his
+pugilist's hands, like a wax doll. Mariano sought her out in the
+drawing-rooms which she and her mother were accustomed to frequent, and
+spent all the time sitting at her side, feeling an impulse to confide in
+her as a brother, a desire of telling her all about herself, his past,
+his present work, his hopes, as if she were a room-mate. She listened to
+him, looking at him with her brown eyes that seemed to smile at him,
+nodding assent, often without having heard what he said, receiving like
+a caress the exuberance of that nature which seemed to overflow in
+waves of fire. He was different from all the men she had known.
+
+When someone--nobody knows who--perhaps one of Josephina's friends,
+noticed this intimacy, to make sport of her, she spread the news. The
+painter and the Torrealta girl were engaged. That was when the
+interested parties discovered that they loved each other. It was
+something more than friendship that made Renovales pass through
+Josephina's street mornings, looking at the high windows in the hope of
+seeing her dainty silhouette through the panes. One night at the
+duchess' when they were left alone in the hallway, Renovales caught her
+hand and lifted it to his lips, but so timidly that they scarcely
+touched her glove. He was afraid after his rudeness, felt ashamed of his
+violence; he thought he was hurting the delicate, slender girl; but she
+let her hand stay in his, and at the same time bowed her head and began
+to cry.
+
+"How good you are, Mariano!"
+
+She felt the most intense gratitude, when she realized that she was
+loved for the first time; loved truly, by a man of some distinction, who
+fled from the women of fortune to seek a humble, neglected girl like
+her. All the treasures of affection which had been accumulating in the
+isolation of her humiliating life overflowed. How she could love the man
+who loved her, taking her out of that parasite's existence, lifting her
+by his strength and affection to the level of those who scorned her!
+
+The noble widow of Torrealta gave a cry of indignation when she learned
+of the engagement of the painter and her daughter. "The blacksmith's
+son!" "The illustrious diplomat of imperishable memory!" But as if this
+protest of her pride opened her eyes, she thought of the years her
+daughter had spent going from one drawing-room to another, without
+anyone paying any attention to her. What dunces men were! She thought,
+too, that a celebrated painter was a personage; she remembered the
+articles devoted to Renovales because of his last picture, and, above
+all, a thing that had the most effect on her, she knew by hearsay of the
+great fortune that artists amassed abroad, the hundreds of thousands of
+francs paid for a canvas that could be carried under your arm. Why might
+not Renovales be one of the fortunate?
+
+She began to annoy her countless relatives with requests for advice. The
+girl had no father and they must take his place. Some answered
+indifferently. "The painter! Hump! Not bad!" evidencing by their
+coldness that it was all the same to them if she married a
+tax-collector. Others insulted her unwittingly by showing their
+approval. "Renovales? An artist with a great future before him. What
+more do you want? You ought to be thankful he has taken a fancy to her."
+But the advice that decided her was that of her famous cousin, the
+Marquis of Tarfe, a man to whom she looked upon as the most
+distinguished citizen in the country, without doubt because of his
+office as permanent head of the Foreign Service, for every two years he
+was made Minister of Foreign Affairs.
+
+"It looks very good to me," said the nobleman, hastily, for they were
+waiting for him in the Senate. "It is a modern marriage and we must keep
+up with the times. I am a conservative, but liberal, very liberal and
+very modern. I will protect the children. I like the marriage. Art
+joining its prestige with a historic family! The popular blood that
+rises through its merits and is mingled with that of the ancient
+nobility!"
+
+And the Marquis of Tarfe, whose marquisate did not go back half a
+century, with these rhetorical figures of an orator in the Senate and
+his promises of protection, convinced the haughty widow. She was the one
+who spoke to Renovales, to relieve him of an explanation that would be
+trying because of the timidity he felt in this society that was not his
+own.
+
+"I know all about it, Mariano, my dear, and you have my consent."
+
+But she did not like long engagements. When did he intend to get
+married? Renovales was more eager for it than the mother. Josephina was
+different from other women who hardly aroused his desire. His chastity,
+which had been like that of a rough laborer, developed into a feverish
+desire to make that charming doll his own as soon as possible. Besides,
+his pride was flattered by this union. His fiancee was poor; her only
+dowry was a few ragged clothes, but she belonged to a noble family,
+ministers, generals--all of noble descent. They could weigh by the ton
+the coronets and coats-of-arms of those countless relatives who did not
+pay much attention to Josephina and her mother, but who would soon be
+his family. What would Senor Anton think, hammering iron in the suburbs
+of his town? What would his comrades in Rome say, whose lot consisted in
+living with the _ciociari_ who served as their models, and marrying them
+afterward out of fear for the stiletto of the venerable Calabrian who
+insisted on providing a legitimate father for his grandsons!
+
+The papers had much to say about the wedding, repeating with slight
+variations the very phrases of the Marquis of Tarfe, "Art uniting with
+nobility." Renovales wanted to leave for Rome with Josephina as soon as
+the marriage was celebrated. He had made all the arrangements for his
+new life there, investing in it all the money he had received from the
+State for his picture and the product of several pictures for the Senate
+for which he received commissions through his illustrious
+relative-to-be.
+
+A friend in Rome (the jolly Cotoner) had hired for him an apartment in
+the Via Margutta and had furnished it in accordance with his artistic
+taste. Dona Emilia would remain in Madrid with one of her sons, who had
+been promoted to a position in the Foreign Office. Everybody, even the
+mother, was in the young couple's way. And Dona Emilia wiped away an
+invisible tear with the tip of her glove. Besides, she did not care to
+go back to the countries where she had been _somebody_; she preferred to
+stay in Madrid; there people knew her at least.
+
+The wedding was an event. Not a soul in the huge family was absent; all
+feared the annoying questions of the illustrious widow who kept a list
+of relatives to the sixth remove.
+
+Senor Anton arrived two days before, in a new suit with knee-breeches
+and a broad plush hat, looking somewhat confused at the smiles of those
+people who regarded him as a quaint type. Crestfallen and trembling in
+the presence of the two women, with a countryman's respect, he called
+his daughter-in-law "Senorita."
+
+"No, papa, call me 'daughter.' Say Josephina to me."
+
+But in spite of Josephina's simplicity and the tender gratitude he felt
+when he saw her look at his son with such loving eyes, he did not
+venture to take the liberty of speaking to her as his child and made the
+greatest efforts to avoid this danger, always speaking to her in the
+third person.
+
+Dona Emilia, with her gold glasses and her majestic bearing, caused him
+even greater emotion. He always called her "Senora marquesa," for in his
+simplicity he could not admit that that lady was not at least a
+marchioness. The widow, somewhat disarmed by the good man's homage,
+admitted that he was a "rube" of some natural talent, a fact that made
+her tolerate the ridiculous note of his knee breeches.
+
+In the chapel of the Marquis of Tarfe's palace, after looking
+dumbfounded at the great throng of nobility that had gathered for his
+son's wedding, the old man, standing in the doorway, began to cry:
+
+"Now I can die, O Lord. Now I can die!"
+
+And he repeated his sad desire, without noticing the laughter of the
+servants, as if, after a life of toil, happiness were the inevitable
+forerunner of death.
+
+The bride and groom started on their trip the same day. Senor Anton for
+the first time kissed his daughter-in-law on the forehead, moistening it
+with his tears, and went home to his village, still repeating his
+longing for death, as though nothing were left in the world for him to
+hope for.
+
+Renovales and his wife reached Rome after several stops on the way.
+Their short stay in various cities of the Riviera, the days in Pisa and
+Florence, though delightful, as keeping the memory of their first
+intimacy, seemed unspeakably vulgar, when they were installed in their
+little house in Rome. There the real honeymoon began, by their own
+fireside, free from all intrusion, far from the confusion of hotels.
+
+Josephina, accustomed to a life of secret privation, to the misery of
+that fourth-floor apartment in which she and her mother lived as though
+they were camping out, keeping all their show for the street, admired
+the coquettish charm, the smart daintiness of the house in the Via
+Margutta. Mariano's friend, who had charge of the furnishing of the
+house, a certain Pepe Cotoner, who hardly ever touched his brushes and
+who devoted all his artistic enthusiasm to his worship of Renovales, had
+certainly done things well.
+
+Josephina clapped her hands in childish joy when she saw the bedroom,
+admiring its sumptuous Venetian furniture, with its wonderful inlaid
+pearl and ebony, a princely luxury that the painter would have to pay
+for in instalments.
+
+Oh! The first night of their stay in Rome! How well Renovales remembered
+it! Josephina, lying on the monumental bed, made for the wife of a Doge,
+shook with the delight of rest, stretching her limbs before she hid them
+under the fine sheets, showing herself with the abandon of a woman who
+no longer has any secrets to keep. The pink toes of her plump little
+feet moved as if they were calling Renovales.
+
+Standing beside the bed, he looked at her seriously, with his brows
+contracted, dominated by a desire that he hesitated to express. He
+wanted to see her, to admire her; he did not know her yet, after those
+nights in the hotels when they could hear strange voices on the other
+side of the thin walls.
+
+It was not the caprice of a lover, it was the desire of a painter, the
+demand of an artist. His eyes were hungry for beauty.
+
+She resisted, blushing, a trifle angry at this demand which offended her
+deepest prejudices.
+
+"Don't be foolish, Mariano, dear. Come to bed; don't talk nonsense."
+
+But he persisted obstinately in his desire. She must overcome her
+bourgeois scruples, art scoffed at such modesty, human beauty was meant
+to be shown in all its radiant majesty and not to be kept hidden,
+despised and cursed.
+
+He did not want to paint her; he did not dare to ask for that; but he
+did want to see her, to see her and admire her, not with a coarse
+desire, but with religious adoration.
+
+And his hands, restrained by the fears of hurting her, gently pulled her
+weak arms that were crossed on her breast in the endeavor to resist his
+advances. She laughed: "You silly thing. You're tickling me--you're
+hurting me." But little by little, conquered by his persistency, her
+feminine pride flattered by this worship of her body, she gave in to
+him, allowed herself to be treated like a child, with soft remonstrances
+as if she were undergoing torture, but without resisting any longer.
+
+Her body, free from veils, shone with the whiteness of pearl. Josephina
+closed her eyes as if she wanted to flee from the shame of her
+nakedness. On the smooth sheet, her graceful form was outlined in a
+slightly rosy tone, intoxicating the eyes of the artist.
+
+Josephina's face was not much to look at, but her body! If he could only
+overcome her scruples some time and paint her!
+
+Renovales kneeled down beside the bed in a transport of admiration.
+
+"I worship you, Josephina. You are as fair as Venus. No, not Venus. She
+is cold and calm, like a goddess, and you are a woman. You are
+like--what are you like? Yes, now I see the likeness. You are Goya's
+little _Maja_, with her delicate grace, her fascinating daintiness. You
+are the _Maja Desnuda!_"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+Renovales' life was changed. In love with his wife, fearing that she
+might lack some comfort, and thinking with anxiety of the Torrealta
+widow, who might complain that the daughter of the "illustrious diplomat
+of imperishable memory" was not happy because she had lowered herself to
+the extent of marrying a painter, he worked incessantly to maintain with
+his brush the comforts with which he had surrounded Josephina.
+
+He, who had had so much scorn for industrial art, painting for money, as
+did his comrades, followed their example, but with the energy that he
+showed in all his undertakings. In some of the studios there were cries
+of protest against this tireless competitor who lowered prices
+scandalously. He had sold his brush for a year to one of those Jewish
+dealers who exported paintings at so much a picture, and under agreement
+not to paint for any other dealer. Renovales worked from morning till
+night changing subjects when it was demanded by what he called his
+_impresario_. "Enough _ciociari_, now for some Moors." Afterwards the
+Moors lost their market-value and the turn of the musketeers came,
+fencing a valiant duel; then pink shepherdesses in the style of Watteau
+or ladies in powdered wigs embarking in a golden gondola to the sound of
+lutes. To give freshness to his stock, he would interpolate a sacristy
+scene with much show of embroidered chasubles and golden incensaries, or
+an occasional bacchanalian, imitating from memory, without models,
+Titians' voluptuous forms and amber flesh. When the list was ended, the
+_ciociari_ were once more in style and could be begun again. The
+painter with his extraordinary facility of execution produced two or
+three pictures a week, and the _impresario_, to encourage him in his
+work, often visited him afternoons, following the movements of his brush
+with the enthusiasm of a man who appreciated art at so much a foot and
+so much an hour. The news he brought was of a sort to infuse new zest.
+
+The last bacchanal painted by Renovales was in a fashionable bar in New
+York. His pageant of the Abruzzi was in one of the noblest castles in
+Russia. Another picture, representing a dance of countesses disguised as
+shepherdesses in a field of violets, was in the possession of a Jewish
+baron, a banker in Frankfort. The dealer rubbed his hands, as he spoke
+to the painter with a patronizing air. His name was becoming famous,
+thanks to him, and he would not step until he had won him a world-wide
+reputation. Already his agents were asking him to send nothing but the
+works of Signor Renovales, for they were the best sellers. But Mariano
+answered him with a sudden outburst of bitterness. All those canvases
+were mere rot. If that was art, he would prefer to break stone on the
+high roads.
+
+But his rebellion against this debasement of his art disappeared when he
+saw his Josephina in the house whose ornamentation he was constantly
+improving, converting it into a jewel case worthy of his love. She was
+happy in her home, with a splendid carriage in which to drive every
+afternoon and perfect freedom to spend money on her clothes and jewelry.
+Renovales' wife lacked nothing; she had-at her disposal, as adviser and
+errand-boy, Cotoner, who spent the night in a garret that served him as
+a studio in one of the cheap districts and the rest of the day with the
+young couple. She was mistress of the money; she had never seen so many
+banknotes at once. When Renovales handed her the pile of lires which
+the impresario gave him she said with a little laugh of joy, "Money,
+money!" and ran and hid it away with the serious expression of a
+diligent, economical housewife--only to take it out the next day and
+squander it with a childish carelessness. What a wonderful thing
+painting was! Her illustrious father (in spite of all that her mother
+said) had never made so much money in all his travels through the world,
+going from cotillon to cotillon as the representative of his king.
+
+While Renovales was in the studio, she had been to drive in the Pincio,
+bowing from her landau to the countless wives of ambassadors who were
+stationed at Rome, to aristocratic travelers stopping in the city, to
+whom she had been introduced in some drawing-room, and to all the crowd
+of diplomatic attaches who live about the double court of the Vatican
+and the Quirinal.
+
+The painter was introduced by his wife into an official society of the
+most rigid formality. The niece of the Marquis of Tarfe, perpetual
+foreign minister, was received with open arms by the high society of
+Rome, the most exclusive in Europe. At every reception at the two
+Spanish embassies, "the famous painter Renovales and his charming wife"
+were present and these invitations had spread to the embassies of other
+countries. Almost every night there was some function. Since there were
+two diplomatic centers, one at the court of the Italian king, the other
+at the Vatican, the receptions and evening parties were frequent in this
+isolated society that gathered every night, sufficient for its own
+enjoyment.
+
+When Renovales got home at dark, tired out with his work, he would find
+Josephina, already half dressed, waiting for him, and Cotoner helped him
+to put on his evening clothes.
+
+"The cross!" exclaimed Josephina, when she saw him with his dress-coat
+on. "Why, man alive, how did you happen to forget your cross? You know
+that they all wear something there."
+
+Cotoner went for the insignia, a great cross the Spanish government had
+given him for his picture, and the artist, with the ribbon across his
+shirt-front and a brilliant circle on his coat, started out with his
+wife to spend the evening among diplomats, distinguished travelers and
+cardinals' nephews.
+
+The other painters were furious with envy when they learned how often
+the Spanish ambassador and his wife, the consul and prominent people
+connected with the Vatican visited his studio. They denied his talent,
+attributing these distinctions to Josephina's position. They called him
+a courtier and a flatterer, alleging that he had married to better his
+position. One of his most constant visitors was Father Recovero, the
+representative of a monastic order that was powerful in Spain, a sort of
+cowled ambassador who enjoyed great influence with the Pope. When he was
+not in Renovales' studio, the latter was sure that he was at his house,
+doing some favor for Josephina who felt proud of her friendship with
+this influential friar, so jovial and scrupulously correct in spite of
+his coarse clothes. Renovales' wife always had some favor to ask of him,
+her friends in Madrid were unceasing in their requests.
+
+The Torrealta widow contributed to this by her constant chatter among
+her acquaintances about the high position her daughter occupied in Rome.
+According to her, Mariano was making millions; Josephina was reported to
+be a great friend of the Pope, her house was full of Cardinals and if
+the Pope did not visit her it was only because the poor thing was a
+prisoner in the Vatican. And so the painter's wife had to keep sending
+to Madrid some rosary that had been passed over St. Peter's tomb or
+reliques taken from the Catacombs. She urged Father Recovero to
+negotiate difficult marriage dispensations and interested herself in
+behalf of the petitions of pious ladies, friends of her mother. The
+great festivals of the Roman Church filled her with enthusiasm because
+of their theatrical interest and she was very grateful to the generous
+friar who never forgot to reserve her a good place. There never was a
+reception of pilgrims in Saint Peter's with a triumphal march of the
+Pope carried on a platform amid feather fans, at which Josephina was not
+present. At other times the good Father made the mysterious announcement
+that on the next day Pallestri, the famous male soprano of the papal
+chapel, was going to sing; the Spanish lady got up early, leaving her
+husband still in bed, to hear the sweet voice of the pontifical eunuch
+whose beardless face appeared in shop windows among the portraits of
+dancers and fashionable tenors.
+
+Renovales laughed good-naturedly at the countless occupations and futile
+entertainments of his wife. Poor girl, she must enjoy herself; that was
+what he was working for. He was sorry enough that he could go with her
+only in her evening diversions. During the day he entrusted her to his
+faithful Cotoner who attended her like an old family servant, carrying
+her bundles when she went shopping, performing the duties of butler and
+sometimes of chef.
+
+Renovales had made his acquaintance when he came to Rome. He was his
+best friend. Ten years his senior, Cotoner showed the worship of a pupil
+and the affections of an older brother for the young artist. Everyone in
+Rome knew him, laughing at his pictures on the rare occasions when he
+painted, and appreciated his accommodating nature that to some extent
+dignified his parasite's existence. Short, rotund, bald-headed, with
+projecting ears and the ugliness of a good-natured, merry satyr, Signor
+Cotoner, when summer came, always found refuge in the castle of some
+cardinal in the Roman Campagna. During the winter he was a familiar
+sight in the Corso, wrapped in his greenish mackintosh, the sleeves of
+which waved like a bat's wings. He had begun in his own province as a
+landscape painter but he wanted to paint figures, to equal the masters,
+and so he landed in Rome in the company of the bishop of his diocese who
+looked on him as an honor to the church. He never moved from the city.
+His progress was remarkable. He knew the names and histories of all the
+artists, no one could compare with him in his ability to live
+economically in Rome and to find where things were cheapest. If a
+Spaniard went through the great city, he never missed visiting him. The
+children of celebrated painters looked on him as a sort of nurse, for he
+had put them all to sleep in his arms. The great triumph of his life was
+having figured in the cavalcade of the Quixote as Sancho Panza. He
+always painted the same picture, portraits of the Pope in three
+different sizes, piling them up in the attic that served him for a
+studio and bedroom. His friends, the cardinals whom he visited
+frequently, took pity on "Poor Signor Cotoner" and for a few lire bought
+a picture of the Pontiff horribly ugly, to present it to some village
+church where it would arouse great admiration since it came from Rome
+and was by a painter who was a friend of His Eminence.
+
+These purchases were a ray of joy for Cotoner, who came to Renovales'
+studio with his head up and wearing a smile of affected modesty.
+
+"I have made a sale, my boy. A pope; a large one, two meter size."
+
+And with a sudden burst of confidence in his talent, he talked of the
+future. Other men desired medals, triumphs in the exhibitions; he was
+more modest. He would be satisfied if he could guess who would be Pope
+when the present Pope died, in order to be able to paint up pictures of
+him by the dozen ahead of time. What a triumph to put the goods on the
+market the day after the Conclave! A perfect fortune! And well
+acquainted with all the cardinals, he passed the Sacred College in
+mental review with the persistency of a gambler in a lottery, hesitating
+between the half dozen who aspired to the tiara. He lived like a
+parasite among the high functionaries of the Church, but he was
+indifferent to religion, as if this association with them had taken away
+all his belief. The old man clad in white and the other red gentlemen
+inspired respect in him because they were rich and served indirectly his
+wretched portrait business. His admiration was wholly devoted to
+Renovales. In the studio of other artists he received their irritating
+jests with his usual calm smile of affability, but they could not speak
+ill of Renovales nor discuss his ability. To his mind, Renovales could
+produce nothing but masterpieces and in his blind admiration he even
+went so far as to rave naively over the easel pictures he painted for
+his impresario.
+
+Sometimes Josephina unexpectedly appeared in her husband's studio and
+chatted with him while he painted, praising the canvases that had a
+pretty subject. She preferred to find him alone in these visits,
+painting from his fancy without any other model than some clothes placed
+on a manikin. She felt a sort of aversion to models, and Renovales tried
+in vain to convince her of the necessity of using them. He had talent to
+paint beautiful things without resorting to the assistance of those
+ordinary old men and above all, of those women with their disheveled
+hair, their flashing eyes and their wolfish teeth, who, in the solitude
+and silence of the studio, actually terrified her. Renovales laughed.
+What nonsense! Jealous little girl! As if he were capable of thinking of
+anything but art with a palette in his hand!
+
+One afternoon, when Josephina suddenly came into the studio she saw on
+the model's platform a naked woman, lying in some furs, showing the
+curves of her yellow back. The wife compressed her lips and pretended
+not to see her, listened to Renovales with a distracted air, as he
+explained this innovation. He was painting a bacchanal and it was
+impossible for him to proceed without a model. It was a case of
+necessity, flesh could not be done from memory. The model, at ease
+before the painter, felt ashamed of her nakedness in the presence of
+that fashionable lady, and after wrapping herself up in the furs, hid
+behind a screen and hastily dressed herself.
+
+Renovales recovered his serenity when he reached home, seeing that his
+wife received him with her customary eagerness, as if she had forgotten
+her displeasure of the afternoon. She laughed at Cotoner's stories;
+after dinner they went to the theater and when bedtime came, the painter
+had forgotten about the surprise in the studio. He was falling asleep
+when he was alarmed by a painful, prolonged sigh, as if some one were
+stifling beside him. When he lit the light he saw Josephina with both
+fists in her eyes, crying, her breast heaving with sobs, and kicking in
+a childish fit of temper till the bed-clothes were rolled in a ball and
+the exquisite puff fell to the floor.
+
+"I won't, I won't," she moaned with an accent of protest.
+
+The painter had jumped out of bed, full of anxiety, going from one side
+to the other without knowing what to do, trying to pull her hands away
+from her eyes, giving in, in spite of his strength, to Josephina's
+efforts to free herself from him.
+
+"But what's the matter? What is it you won't do? What's happened to
+you?"
+
+And she continued to cry, tossing about in the bed, kicking in a nervous
+fury.
+
+"Let me alone! I don't like you; don't touch me. I won't let you, no,
+sir, I won't let you. I'm going away. I'm going home to my mother."
+
+Renovales, terrified at the fury of the little woman who was always so
+gentle, did not know what to do to calm her. He ran through the bedroom
+and the adjoining dressing room in his night shirt, that showed his
+athletic muscles; he offered her water, going so far as to pick up the
+bottles of perfumes in his confusion as if they could serve him as
+sedatives, and finally he knelt down, trying to kiss the clenched little
+hands that thrust him away, catching at his hair and beard.
+
+"Let me alone. I tell you to let me alone. I know you don't love me. I'm
+going away."
+
+The painter was surprised and afraid of the nervousness in this beloved
+little doll; he did not dare to touch her for fear of hurting her. As
+soon as the sun rose she would leave that house forever. Her husband did
+not love her. No one but her mother cared for her. He was making her a
+laughing stock before people. And all these incoherent complaints that
+did not explain the motive for her anger, continued for a long time
+until the artist guessed the cause. Was it the model, the naked woman?
+Yes, that was it; she would not consent to it, that in a studio that was
+practically her house, low women should show themselves immodestly to
+her husband's eyes. And as she protested against such abominations, her
+twitching fingers tore the front of her night dress, showing the hidden
+charms that filled Renovales with such enthusiasm.
+
+The painter, tired out by this scene, enervated by the cries and tears
+of his wife, could not help laughing when he discovered the motive of
+her irritation.
+
+"Ah! So it's all on account of the model. Be quiet, girl, no woman shall
+come into the studio."
+
+And he promised everything Josephina wished, in order to be over with it
+as soon as possible. When it was dark once more, she was still sighing,
+but now it was in her husband's strong arms with her head resting on his
+breast, lisping like a grieved child that tries to justify the past fit
+of temper. It did not cost Mariano anything to do her this favor. She
+loved him dearly, so dearly, and she would love him still more if he
+respected her prejudices. He might call her bourgeois, a common ordinary
+soul, but that was what she wanted to be, just as she always had been.
+Besides, what was the need of painting naked women? Couldn't he do other
+things? She urged him to paint children in smocks and sandals, curly
+haired and chubby, like the child Jesus; old peasant women with
+wrinkled, copper-colored faces, bald-headed ancients with long beards;
+character studies, but no young women, understand? No naked beauties!
+Renovales said "yes" to everything, drawing close to him that beloved
+form still trembling with its past rage. They clung to each other with a
+sort of anxiety, desirous of forgetting what had happened, and the night
+ended peacefully for Renovales in the happiness of reconciliation.
+
+When summer came they rented a little villa at Castel-Gandolfo. Cotoner
+had gone to Rivoli in the train of a cardinal and the married couple
+lived in the country accompanied only by a couple of maids and a
+manservant, who took care of Renovales' painting kit.
+
+Josephina was perfectly contented in this retirement, far from Rome,
+talking with her husband at all hours, free from the anxiety that filled
+her, when he was working in his studio. For a month Renovales remained
+in placid idleness. His art seemed forgotten; the boxes of paints, the
+easels, all the artistic luggage brought from Rome, remained packed up
+and forgotten in a shed in the garden. Afternoons they took long walks,
+returning home at nightfall slowly, with their arms around each other's
+waists, watching the strip of pale gold in the western sky, breaking the
+rural silence with one of the sweet, passionate romances that came from
+Naples. Now that they were alone in the intimacy of a life without cares
+or friendships, the enthusiastic love of the first days of their married
+life reawakened. But the "demon of painting" was not long in spreading
+over him his invisible wings, which seemed to scatter an irresistible
+enchantment. He became bored at the long hours in the bright sun, yawned
+in his wicker chair, smoking pipe after pipe, not knowing what to talk
+about. Josephina, on her part, tried to drive away the ennui by reading
+some English novel of aristocratic life, tiresome and moral, to which
+she had taken a great liking in her school girl days.
+
+Renovales began to work again. His servant brought out his artist's kit
+and he took up his palette as enthusiastically as a beginner, and
+painted for himself with a religious fervor as if he thought to purify
+himself from that base submission to the commissions of a dealer.
+
+He studied Nature directly; painted delightful bits of landscapes,
+tanned and repulsive heads that breathed the selfish brutality of the
+peasant. But this artistic activity did not seem to satisfy him. His
+life of increased intimacy with Josephina aroused in him mysterious
+longings that he hardly dared to formulate. Mornings when his wife,
+fresh and rosy from her bath, appeared before him almost naked, he
+looked at her with greedy eyes.
+
+"Oh, if you were only willing! If you didn't have that foolish prejudice
+of yours!"
+
+And his exclamations made her smile, for her feminine vanity was
+flattered by this worship. Renovales regretted that his artistic talent
+had to go in search of beautiful things when the supreme, definitive
+work was at his side. He told her about Rubens, the great master, who
+surrounded Elene Froment with the luxury of a princess, and of her who
+felt no objection to freeing her fresh, mythological beauty from veils
+in order to serve as a model for her husband. Renovales praised the
+Flemish woman. Artists formed a family by themselves; morality and the
+popular prejudices were meant for other people. They lived under the
+jurisdiction of Beauty, regarding as natural what other people looked on
+as a sin.
+
+Josephina protested against her husband's wishes with a playful
+indignation but she allowed him to admire her. Her abandon increased
+every day. Mornings, when she got up, she remained undressed longer,
+prolonging her toilette while the artist walked around her, praising her
+various beauties. "That is Rubens, pure and simple, that's Titian's
+color. Look, little girl, lift up your arms, like this. Oh, you are the
+_Maja_, Goya's little _Maja_." And she submitted to him with a gracious
+pout, as if she relished the expression of worship and disappointment
+which her husband wore at possessing her as a woman and not possessing
+her as a model.
+
+One afternoon when a scorching wind seemed to stifle the countryside
+with its breath, Josephina capitulated. They were in their room, with
+the windows closed, trying to escape the terrible sirocco by shutting
+it out and putting on thin clothes. She did not want to see her husband
+with such a gloomy face nor listen to his complaints. As long as he was
+crazy and was set on his whim, she did not dare to oppose him. He could
+paint her; but only a study, not a picture. When he was tired of
+reproducing her flesh on the canvas they would destroy it,--just as if
+he had done nothing.
+
+The painter said "yes" to everything, eager to have his brush in hand as
+soon as possible, before the beauty he craved. For three days he worked
+with a mad fever, with his eyes unnaturally wide open, as if he meant to
+devour the graceful outlines with his sight. Josephina, accustomed now
+to being naked, posed with unconscious abandon, with that feminine
+shamelessness which hesitates only at the first step. Oppressed by the
+heat, she slept while her husband kept on painting.
+
+When the work was finished, Josephina could not help admiring it. "How
+clever you are! But am I really like that, so pretty?" Mariano showed
+his satisfaction. It was his masterpiece, his best. Perhaps in all his
+life he might never find another moment like that, of prodigious mental
+intensity, what people commonly call inspiration. She continued to
+admire herself in the canvas, just as she did some mornings in the great
+mirror in the bedroom. She praised the various parts of her beauty with
+frank immodesty. Dazzled by the beauty of her body she did not notice
+the face, that seemed unimportant, lost in soft veils. When her eyes
+fell on it she showed a sort of disappointment.
+
+"It doesn't look much like me! It isn't my face!"
+
+The artist smiled. It was not she; he had tried to disguise her face,
+nothing but her face. It was a mask, a concession to social conventions.
+As it was, no one would recognize her and his work, his great work,
+might appear and receive the admiration of the world.
+
+"Because, we aren't going to destroy it," Renovales continued with a
+tremble in his voice, "that would be a crime. Never in my life will I be
+able to do anything like it again. We won't destroy it, will we, little
+girl?"
+
+The little girl remained silent for a good while with her gaze fixed on
+the picture. Renovales' eager eyes saw a cloud slowly rise over her
+face, like a shadow on a white wall. The painter felt as though the
+floor were sinking under his feet; the storm was coming. Josephina
+turned pale, two tears slipped slowly down her cheeks, two others took
+their places to fall with them and then more and more.
+
+"I won't! I won't!"
+
+It was the same hoarse, nervous, despotic cry that had set his hair on
+end with anxiety and fear that night in Rome. The little woman looked
+with hatred at the naked body that radiated its pearly light from the
+depths of the canvas. She seemed to feel the terror of a sleep-walker
+who suddenly awakens in the midst of a square surrounded by a thousand
+curious, eager eyes and in her fright does not know what to do nor where
+to flee. How could she have assented to such a disgraceful thing?
+
+"I won't have it!" she cried angrily. "Destroy it, Mariano, destroy it."
+
+But Mariano seemed on the point of weeping too. Destroy it! Who could
+demand such a foolish thing? That figure was not she; no one would
+recognize her. What was the use of depriving him of a signal triumph?
+But his wife did not listen to him. She was rolling on the floor with
+the same convulsions and moans as on the night of the stormy scene, her
+hands were clenched like a crook, her feet kicked like a dying lamb's
+and her mouth, painfully distorted, kept crying hoarsely:
+
+"I won't have it! I won't have it! Destroy it!"
+
+She complained of her lot with a violence that wounded Renovales. She, a
+respectable woman, submitted to that degradation as if she were a street
+walker. If she had only known! How was she going to imagine that her
+husband would make such abominable proposals to her!
+
+Renovales, offended at these insults, at these lashes which her shrill,
+piercing voice dealt his artistic talent, left his wife, let her roll on
+the floor and with clenched fists, went from one end of the room to the
+other, looking at the ceiling, muttering all the oaths, Spanish and
+Italian, that were in current use in his studio.
+
+Suddenly he stood still, rooted to the floor by terror and surprise.
+Josephina, still naked, had jumped on the picture with the quickness of
+a wild cat. With the first stroke of her finger nails, she scratched the
+canvas from top to bottom, mingling the colors that were still soft,
+tearing off the thin shell of the dry parts. Then she caught up the
+little knife from the paint box and--rip! the canvas gave a long moan,
+parted under the thrust of that white arm which seemed to have a bluish
+cast in the violence of her wrath.
+
+He did not move. For a moment he felt indignant, tempted to throw
+himself on her but he lapsed into a childish weakness, ready to cry, to
+take refuge in a corner, to hide his weak, aching head. She, blind with
+wrath, continued to vent her fury on the picture, tangling her feet in
+the wood of the frame, tearing off pieces of canvas, walking back and
+forth with her prey like a wild beast. The artist had leaned his head
+against the wall, his strong breast shook with cowardly sobs.
+
+To the almost fatherly grief at the loss of his work was added the
+bitterness of disappointment. For the first time he foresaw what his
+life was going to be. What a mistake he had made in marrying that girl
+who admired his art as a profession, as a means of making money, and who
+was trying to mold him to the prejudices and scruples of the circle in
+which she was born! He loved her in spite of this and he was certain
+that she did not love him less, but, still, perhaps it would have been
+better to remain alone, free for his art and, in case a companion was
+necessary, to find a fair maid of all work with all the splendor and
+intellectual humility of a beautiful animal that would admire and obey
+her master blindly.
+
+Three days passed in which the painter and his wife hardly spoke to each
+other. They looked at each other askance, humbled and broken by this
+domestic trouble. But the solitude in which they lived, the necessity of
+remaining together made the reconciliation imperative. She was the first
+to speak, as if she were terrified by the sadness and dejection of that
+huge giant who wandered about as peevish as a sick man. She threw her
+arms around him, kissed his forehead, made a thousand gracious efforts
+to bring a faint smile to his face. "Who loved him? His Josephina. His
+_Maja_ but not his _Maja Desnuda;_ that was over forever. He must never
+think of those horrible things. A decent painter does not think of them.
+What would all her friends say? There were many pretty things to paint
+in the world. They must live in each other's love, without his
+displeasing her with his hateful whims. His affection for the nude was a
+shameful remnant of his Bohemian days."
+
+And Renovales, won over by his wife's petting, made peace,--tried to
+forget his work and smiled with the resignation of a slave who loves
+his chain because it assures him peace and life.
+
+They returned to Rome at the beginning of the fall. Renovales began his
+work for the contractor, but after a few months the latter seemed
+dissatisfied. Not that Signor Mariano was losing power, not at all, but
+his agents complained of a certain monotony in the subjects of his
+works. The dealer advised him to travel; he might stay awhile in Umbria,
+painting peasants in ascetic landscapes, or old churches; he might--and
+this was the best thing to do--move to Venice. How much Signor Mariano
+could accomplish in those canals! And it was thus that the idea of
+leaving Rome first came to the painter.
+
+Josephina did not object. That daily round of receptions in the
+countless embassies and legations was beginning to bore her. Now that
+the charm of the first impressions had disappeared, Josephina noticed
+that the great ladies treated her with an annoying condescension as if
+she had descended from her rank in marrying an artist. Besides, the
+younger men in the embassies, the attaches of different nationalities,
+some light, some dark, who sought relief from their celibacy without
+going outside diplomatic society, were disgracefully impudent as they
+danced with her or went through the figures of a cotillion, as if they
+considered her an easy conquest, seeing her married to an artist who
+could not display an ugly uniform in the drawing rooms. They made
+cynical declarations to her in English or German and she had to keep her
+temper, smiling and biting her lips, close to Renovales, who did not
+understand a word and showed his satisfaction at the attentions of which
+his wife was the object on the part of the fashionable youths whose
+manners he tried to imitate.
+
+The trip was decided on. They would go to Venice! Their friend Cotoner
+said "Good-by," he was sorry to part from them but his place was in
+Rome. The Pope was ailing just at that time and the painter, in the hope
+of his death, was preparing canvases of all sizes, striving to guess who
+would be his successor.
+
+As he went back in his memories, Renovales always thought of his life in
+Venice with a sort of pleasant homesickness. It was the best period of
+his life. The enchanting city of the lagoons,--bathed in golden light,
+lulled by the lapping of the water, fascinated him from the first
+moment, making him forget his love for the human form. For some time his
+enthusiasm for the nude was calmed. He worshiped the old palaces, the
+solitary canals, the lagoon with its green, motionless waiter, the soul
+of a majestic past, which seemed to breathe in the solemn old age of the
+dead, eternally smiling city.
+
+They lived in the Foscarini palace, a huge building with red walls and
+casements of white stone that opened on a little alley of water
+adjoining the Grand Canal. It was the former abode of merchants,
+navigators and conquerors of the Isles of the East who in times gone by
+had worn on their heads the golden horn of the Doges. The modern spirit,
+utilitarian and irreverent, had converted the palace into a tenement,
+dividing gilded drawing rooms with ugly partitions, establishing
+kitchens in the filigreed arcades of the seignorial court, filling the
+marble galleries to which the centuries gave the amber-like transparency
+of old ivory, with clothes hung out to dry and replacing the gaps in the
+superb mosaic with cheap square tiles.
+
+Renovales and his wife occupied the apartment nearest the Grand Canal.
+Mornings, Josephina saw from a bay window the rapid silent approach of
+her husband's gondola. The gondolier, accustomed to the service of
+artists, shouted to the painter, till Renovales came down with his box
+of water-colors and the boat started immediately through the narrow,
+winding canals, moving the silvered comb of its prow from one side to
+the other as if it were feeling the way. What mornings of placid silence
+in the sleeping water of an alley, between two palaces whose boldly
+projecting roofs kept the surface of the little canal in perpetual
+shadow! The gondolier slept stretched out in one of the curving ends of
+his boat and Renovales, sitting beside the black canopy, painted his
+Venetian water-colors, a new type that his impresario in Rome received
+with the greatest enthusiasm. His deftness enabled him to produce these
+works with as much facility as if they were mechanical copies. In the
+maze of canals he had one of his own which he called his "estate" on
+account of the money it netted him. He had painted again and again its
+dead, silent waters which all day long were never rippled except by his
+gondola; two old palaces with broken blinds, the doors covered with the
+crust of years, stairways rotted with mold and in the background a
+little arch of light, a marble bridge and under it the life, the
+movement, the sun of a broad, busy canal. The neglected little alley
+came to life every week under Renovales' brush--he could paint it with
+his eyes shut--and the business initiative of the Roman Jew scattered it
+through the world.
+
+The afternoons Mariano passed with his wife. Sometimes they went in a
+gondola to the promenade of the Lido and sitting on the sandy beach,
+watched the angry surface of the open Adriatic, that stretched its
+tossing white caps to the horizon, like a flock of snowy sheep hurrying
+in the rush of a panic.
+
+Other afternoons they walked in the Square of Saint Mark, under the
+arcades of its three rows of palaces where they could see in the
+background, by the last rays of the sun, the pale gold of the basilica
+gleaming, as if in its walls and domes there were crystallized all the
+wealth of the ancient Republic.
+
+Renovales, with his wife on his arm, walked calmly as if the majesty of
+the place impelled him to a sort of noble bearing. The august silence
+was not disturbed by the deafening hubbub of other great capitals; no
+rattling of carts or footsteps of horses or hucksters' cries. The
+Square, with its white marble pavement, was a huge drawing room through
+which the visitors passed as if they were making a call. The musicians
+of the Venice band were gathered in the center with their hats
+surmounted by black waving plumes. The blasts of the Wagnerian brasses,
+galloping in the mad ride of the Valkyries, made the marble columns
+shake and seemed to give life to the four golden horses that reared over
+space with silent whinnies on the cornice of St. Mark's.
+
+The dark-feathered doves of Venice scattered in playful spirals,
+somewhat frightened at the music, finally settled, like rain, on the
+tables of the cafe. Then, taking flight again, they blackened the roof
+of the palaces and once more swooped down like a mantle of metallic
+luster on the groups of English tourists in green veils and round hats,
+who called them in order to offer them grain.
+
+Josephina, with childish eagerness, left her husband in order to buy a
+cone full of grain, and spreading it out in her gloved hands she
+gathered the wards of St. Mark around her; they rested on the flowers of
+her head, fluttering like fantastic crests, they hopped on her
+shoulders, or lined up on her outstretched arms, they clung desperately
+to her slight hips, trying to walk around her waist, and others, more
+daring, as if possessed of human mischievousness, scratched her breast,
+reached out their beaks striving to caress her ruddy, half-opened, lips
+through the veil. She laughed, trembling at the tickling of the animated
+cloud that rubbed against her body. Her husband watched her, laughing
+too, and certain that no one but she would understand him, he called to
+her in Spanish.
+
+"My, but you are beautiful! I wish I could paint your picture! If it
+weren't for the people, I would kiss you."
+
+Venice was the scene of her happiest days. She lived quietly while her
+husband worked, taking odd corners of the city for his models. When he
+left the house, her placid calm was not disturbed by any troublesome
+thought. This was painting, she was sure,--and not the conditions of
+affairs in Rome, where he would shut himself up with shameless women who
+were not afraid to pose stark naked. She loved him with a renewed
+passion, she petted him with constant caresses. It was then that her
+daughter was born, their only child.
+
+Majestic Dona Emilia could not remain in Madrid when she learned that
+she was going to be a grandmother. Her poor Josephina, in a foreign
+land, with no one to take care of her but her husband, who had some
+talent according to what people said, but who seemed to her rather
+ordinary! At her son-in-law's expense, she made the trip to Venice and
+there she stayed for several months, fuming against the city, which she
+had never visited in her diplomatic travels. The distinguished lady
+considered that no cities were inhabitable except the capitals that have
+a court. Pshaw! Venice! A shabby town that no one liked but writers of
+romanzas and decorators of fans, and where there were nothing higher
+than consuls. She liked Rome with its Pope and kings. Besides, it made
+her seasick to ride in the gondolas and she complained constantly of the
+rheumatism, blaming it to the dampness of the lagoons.
+
+Renovales, who had feared for Josephina's life, believing that her weak,
+delicate constitution could not stand the shock, broke out into cries of
+joy when he received the little one in his arms and looked at the mother
+with her head resting on the pillow as if she were dead. Her white face
+was hardly outlined against the white of the linen. His first thought
+was for her, for the pale features, distorted by the recent crisis,
+which gradually were growing calmer with rest. Poor little girl! How she
+had suffered! But as he tip-toed out of the bed room in order not to
+disturb the heavy sleep that, after two cruel days, had overpowered the
+sick woman, he gave himself up to his admiration for the bit of flesh
+that lay in the huge flabby arms of the grandmother, wrapped in fine
+linen. Ah, what a dear little thing! He looked at the livid little face,
+the big head, thinly covered with hair, seeking for some suggestion of
+himself in this surge of flesh that was in motion and still without
+definite form. "Mamma, whom does she look like?"
+
+Dona Emilia was surprised at his blindness. Whom; should she look like?
+Like him, no one but him. She was large, enormous; she had seen few
+babies as large as this one. It did not seem possible that her poor
+daughter could live after giving birth to "that." They could not
+complain that she was not healthy; she was as ruddy as a country baby.
+
+"She's a Renovales; she's yours, wholly yours, Mariano. We belong to a
+different class."
+
+And Renovales, without noticing his mother's words, saw only that his
+daughter was like him, overjoyed to see how robust she was, shouting his
+pleasure at the health of which the grandmother spoke in a disappointed
+tone.
+
+In vain did he and Dona Emilia try to dissuade Josephina from nursing
+the baby. The little woman, in spite of the weakness that kept her
+motionless in bed, wept and cried almost as she had in the crises that
+had so terrified Renovales.
+
+"I won't have it," she said with that obstinacy that made her so
+terrible.
+
+"I won't have a strange woman's milk for my daughter. I will nurse her,
+her mother."
+
+And they had to give the baby to her.
+
+When Josephina seemed recovered, her mother, feeling that her mission
+was over, went home to Madrid. She was bored to death in that silent
+city of Venice, night after night she thought she was dead, for she
+could not hear a single sound from her bed. The calm, interrupted now
+and then by the shouts of the gondoliers filled her with the same terror
+that she felt in a cemetery. She had no friends, she did not "shine";
+there was nobody in that dirty hole and nobody knew her. She was always
+recalling her distinguished friends in Madrid where she thought she was
+an indispensable personage. The modesty of her granddaughter's
+christening left a deep impression in her mind in spite of the fact that
+they gave her name to the child; an insignificant little party that
+needed only two gondolas; she, who was the godmother, with the
+godfather, an old Venetian painter, who was a friend of Renovales and,
+besides, Renovales himself and two artists, a Frenchman and another
+Spaniard. The Patriarch of Venice did not officiate at the baptism, not
+even a bishop. And she knew so many of them at home. A mere priest, who
+was in a shameful hurry, had been sufficient to christen the
+granddaughter of the famous diplomat, in a little church, as the sun was
+setting. She went away repeating once more that Josephina was killing
+herself, that it was perfect folly for her to nurse the baby in her
+delicate condition, regretting that she did not follow the example of
+her mother who had always intrusted her children to nurses.
+
+Josephina cried bitterly when her mother went, but Renovales said
+"good-by" with ill-concealed joy. _Bon voyage_! He simply could not
+endure the woman, always complaining that she was being neglected when
+she saw how her son-in-law was working to make her daughter happy. The
+only thing he agreed with her in was in scolding Josephina tenderly for
+her obstinacy in nursing the baby. Poor little _Maja Desnuda_! Her form
+had lost its bud-like daintiness in the full flower of motherhood.
+
+She appeared more robust, but the stoutness was accompanied by an anemic
+weakness. Her husband, seeing how she was losing her daintiness, loved
+her with more tender compassion. Poor little girl! How good she was! She
+was sacrificing herself for her daughter.
+
+When the baby was a year old, the great crisis in Renovales' life
+occurred. Desirous of taking a "bath in art," of knowing what was going
+on outside of the dungeon in which he was imprisoned, painting at so
+much a piece, he left Josephina in Venice and made a short trip to Paris
+to see its famous Salon. He came back transfigured, with a new fever for
+work and a determination to transform his existence which filled his
+wife with astonishment and fear. He was going to break with his
+_impresario_, he would no longer debase himself with that false
+painting, even if he had to beg for his living. Great things were being
+done in the world, and he felt that he had the courage to be an
+innovator, following the steps of those modern painters who made such a
+profound impression on him.
+
+Now he hated old Italy, where artists went to study under the protection
+of ignorant governments.
+
+In reality what they found there was a market of tempting commissions
+where they soon grew accustomed to taking orders, to the luxurious,
+indifferent life of easy profit. He wanted to move to Paris. But
+Josephina, who listened to Renovales' fancies in silence, unable to
+understand them for the most part, modified this determination by her
+advice. She too wanted to leave Venice. The city seemed gloomy in the
+winter with its ceaseless rains that left the bridges slippery and the
+marble alleys impassable. Since they were determined to break up camp,
+why not go back to Madrid? Mamma was sick, she complained in all her
+letters at living so far from her daughter. Josephina wanted to see her,
+she had a presentiment that her mother was going to die. Renovales
+thought it over; he too wanted to go back to Spain. He felt homesick;
+he thought of the great stir he would cause there, teaching his new
+methods amid the general routine. The desire of shocking the
+Academicians, who had accepted him before because he had renounced his
+ideals, tempted him.
+
+They went back to Madrid with little Milita, as they called her for
+short, abbreviating the diminutive of Emilia. Renovales brought with him
+as his whole capital some few thousand lire, that represented
+Josephina's savings and the product of his sale of part of the furniture
+that decorated the poorly furnished halls of the Foscarini palace.
+
+At first it was hard. Dona Emilia died a few months after they reached
+Madrid. Her funeral did not come up to the dreams the illustrious widow
+had always fashioned. Hardly a score of her countless relatives were
+present. Poor old lady, if she had known how her hopes were destined to
+be disappointed! Renovales was almost glad of the event. With it, the
+only tie that bound them to society was broken. He and Josephina lived
+in a fifth story flat on the Calle de Alcala, near the Plaza de Toros,
+with a large terrace that the artist converted into a studio. Their life
+was modest, secluded, humble, without friends or functions. She spent
+the day taking care of her daughter and the house, without help except a
+dull, poorly-paid maid. Oftentimes when she seemed most active, she fell
+into a sudden languor, complaining of strange, new ailments.
+
+Mariano hardly ever worked at home; he painted out of doors. He despised
+the conventional light of the studio, the closeness of its atmosphere.
+He wandered through the suburbs of Madrid and the neighboring provinces
+in search of rough, simple types, whose faces seemed to bear the stamp
+of the ancient Spanish soul. He climbed the Guadarrama in the midst of
+winter, standing alone in the snowy fields like an Arctic explorer, to
+transfer to his canvas the century-old pines, twisted and black under
+their caps of frozen sleet.
+
+When the Exhibition took place, Renovales' name became famous in a
+flash. He did not present a huge picture with a key, as he had at his
+first triumph. They were small canvases, studies prompted by a chance
+meeting; bits of nature, men and landscapes reproduced with an
+astonishing, brutal truth that shocked the public.
+
+The sober fathers of painting writhed as if they had received a slap in
+the face, before those sketches that seemed to flame among the other
+dead, leaden pictures. They admitted that Renovales was a painter, but
+he lacked imagination, invention, his only merit was his ability to
+transfer to the canvas what his eyes saw. The younger men flocked to the
+standard of the new master; there were endless disputes, impassioned
+arguments, deadly hatred, and over this battle Renovales', name
+flitted, appearing almost daily in the newspapers, till he was almost as
+celebrated as a bull-fighter or an orator in the Congress.
+
+The struggle lasted for six years, giving rise to a storm of insults and
+applause every time that Renovales exhibited one of his works, and
+meanwhile the master, discussed as he was, lived in poverty, forced to
+paint water-colors in the old style which he secretly sent to his dealer
+in Rome. But all combats have their end. The public finally accepted as
+unquestionable a name that they saw every day; his enemies, weakened by
+the unconscious effect of public opinion, grew tired, and the master
+like all innovators, as soon as the first success of the scandal was
+over, began to limit his daring, pruning and softening his original
+brutality. The dreaded painter became fashionable. The easy,
+instantaneous success he had won at the beginning of his career was
+renewed, but more solidly and more definitely, like a conquest made by
+rough, hard paths when there is a struggle at every step.
+
+Money, the fickle page, came back to him, holding the train of glory. He
+sold pictures at prices unheard of in Spain and they grew fabulously as
+they were repeated by his admirers. Some American millionaires,
+surprised that a Spanish painter should be mentioned abroad and that the
+principal reviews in Europe should reproduce his works, bought canvases
+as objects of great luxury. The master, embittered by the poverty of his
+years of struggle, suddenly felt a longing for money, an overpowering
+greed that his friends had never known in him. His wife seemed to grow
+more sickly every day; her daughter was growing up and he wanted his
+Milita to have the education and the luxuries of a princess. They now
+had a respectable house of their own, but he wanted something better for
+them. His business instinct, which everyone recognized in him when he
+was not blinded by some artistic prejudice, strove to make his brush an
+instrument of great profits.
+
+Pictures were bound to disappear, according to the master. Modern rooms,
+small and soberly decorated, were not fitted for the large canvases that
+ornamented the walls of drawing rooms in the old days. Besides, the
+reception rooms of the present, like the rooms in a doll's house, were
+good merely for pretty pictures marked by stereotyped mannerisms. Scenes
+taken from nature were out of place in this background. The only way to
+make money then was to paint portraits and Renovales forgot his
+distinction as an innovator in order to win at any cost fame as a
+portrait painter of society people. He painted members of the royal
+family in all sorts of postures, not omitting any of their important
+occupations; on foot, and on horseback, with a general's plumes or a
+gray hunting jacket, killing pigeons or riding in an automobile. He
+portrayed the beauties of the oldest families, concealing imperceptibly,
+with clever dissimulation, the ravages of time, giving firmness to the
+flabby flesh with his brush, holding up the heavy eyelids and cheeks
+that sagged with fatigue and the poison of rouge. After successes at
+court, the rich considered a portrait by Renovales as an indispensable
+decoration for their drawing rooms. They sought him because his
+signature cost thousands of dollars; to possess a canvas by him was an
+evidence of opulence, quite as necessary as an automobile of the best
+make.
+
+Renovales was as rich as a painter can be. It was at that time that he
+built what envious people called his "pantheon"; a magnificent mansion
+behind the iron grating of the Retiro.
+
+He had a violent desire to build a home after his own heart and image,
+like those mollusks that build a shell with the substance of their
+bodies so that it may serve both as a dwelling and a defense. There
+awakened in him that longing for show, for pompous, swaggering, amusing
+originality that lies dormant in the mind of every artist. At first he
+planned a reproduction of Rubens' palace in Antwerp, open _loggie_ for
+studios, leafy gardens covered with flowers at all seasons, and in the
+paths, gazelles, giraffes, birds of bright plumage, like flying flowers,
+and other exotic animals which this great painter used as models in his
+desire to copy Nature in all its magnificence.
+
+But he was forced to give up this dream, on account of the nature of the
+building sites in Madrid, a few thousand feet of barren, chalky soil,
+bounded by a wretched fence and as dry as only Castile can be. Since
+this Rubenesque ostentation was not possible, he took refuge in
+Classicism and in a little garden he erected a sort of Greek temple that
+should serve at once as a dwelling and a studio. On the triangular
+pediment rose three tripods like torch-holders, that gave the house the
+appearance of a commemorative tomb. But in order that those who stopped
+outside the grating might make no mistake, the master had garlands of
+laurel, palettes surrounded with crowns, carved on the stone facade, and
+in the midst of this display of simple modesty a short inscription in
+gold letters of average size--"Renovales." Exactly like a store. Inside,
+in two studios where no one ever painted and which led to the real
+working studio, the finished pictures were exhibited on easels covered
+with antique textures, and callers gazed with wonder at the collection
+of properties fit for a theater,--suits of armor, tapestries, old
+standards hanging from the ceiling, show-cases full of ancient
+knick-knacks, deep couches with canopies of oriental stuffs supported by
+lances, century old coffers and open secretaries shining with the pale
+gold of their rows of drawers.
+
+These studios where no one studied were like the luxurious line of
+waiting rooms in the house of a doctor who charges twenty dollars for a
+consultation, or like the anterooms, furnished in dark leather with
+venerable pictures, of a famous lawyer, who never opens his mouth
+without carrying off a large portion of his client's fortune. People who
+waited in these two studios spacious as the nave of a church, with the
+silent majesty which comes with the lapse of years, were brought to the
+necessary frame of mind to make them submit to the enormous prices the
+master demanded.
+
+Renovales had "made good" and he could rest calmly, as his admirers
+said. And still the master was gloomy; his nature, embittered by his
+years of silent suffering, broke out in violent fits of temper.
+
+The slightest attack by some insignificant enemy was enough to send him
+into a rage. His pupils thought it was due to the fact that he was
+getting old. His struggles had so aged him that with his heavy beard and
+his round shoulders he looked ten years older than he was.
+
+In this white temple, on the pediment of which his name shone in letters
+of glorious gold, he was not so happy as in the modest houses in Italy
+or the little garret near the Plaza de Toros. All that was left of the
+Josephina of the first months of his married life was a distant shadow.
+The "_Maja Desnuda_" of the happy nights in Rome and Venice was nothing
+but a memory. On her return to Spain the false stoutness of motherhood
+had disappeared.
+
+She grew thin, as if some hidden fire were devouring her; the flesh that
+had covered her body with graceful curves melted away in the flames that
+burned within her. The sharp angles and dark hollows of her skeleton
+began to show beneath her pale, flabby flesh. Poor _"Maja Desnuda"!_
+Her husband pitied her, attributing her decline to the struggles and
+cares she had suffered when they first returned to Madrid.
+
+For her sake, he was eager to conquer, to become rich, that he might
+provide her with the comforts he had dreamed of. Her illness seemed to
+be mental; it was neurasthenia, melancholia. The poor woman had suffered
+without doubt at being condemned to a pauper's existence, in Madrid,
+where she had once lived in comparative splendor, this time in a
+wretched house, struggling with poverty, forced to perform the most
+menial tasks. She complained of strange pains, her legs lost their
+strength, she sank into a chair where she would stay motionless for
+hours at a time, weeping without knowing why. Her digestion was poor;
+for weeks her stomach refused all nourishment. At night she would toss
+about in bed, unable to sleep and at daybreak she was up flitting about
+the house with a feverish activity, turning things upside down, finding
+fault with the servant, with her husband, with herself, until suddenly
+she would collapse from the height of her excitement and begin to cry.
+
+These domestic trials broke the painter's spirit, but he bore them
+patiently. Now a gentle sympathy was added to his former love, when he
+saw her so weak, without any remnant of her former charm except her
+eyes, sunk in their bluish sockets, bright with the mysterious fire of
+fever. Poor little girl! Her struggles brought her to such a pass. Her
+weakness filled Renovales with a sort of remorse. Her lot was that of
+the soldier who sacrifices himself for his general's glory. He had
+conquered, but he left behind him the woman he loved, fallen in the
+struggle because she was the weaker.
+
+He admired, too, her maternal self-sacrifice. The baby, Milita, who
+attracted attention because of her whiteness and ruddiness, had the
+strength that her mother lacked. The greediness of this strong,
+enslaving creature had absorbed all of the mother's life.
+
+When the artist was rich and installed his family in the new house, he
+thought that Josephina was going to get well. The doctors were confident
+of a rapid improvement. The first day that they walked through the
+parlors and studios of the new house, taking note of the furniture and
+the valuables, old and new, with a glance of satisfaction, Renovales put
+him arm around the waist of the weak little doll, bending his head over
+her, caressing her forehead with his bearded lips.
+
+Everything was hers, the house and its sumptuous decorations, hers too
+was the money that was left and that he would continue to make. She was
+the owner, the absolute mistress, she could spend all she wanted to, he
+would stand for everything. She could wear stylish clothes, have
+carriages, make her former friends green with envy, be proud of being
+the wife of a famous painter, much more proud than others who had landed
+a ducal crown by marriage. Was she satisfied?
+
+She said "Yes," nodding her assent weakly, and she even stood on tiptoe
+to kiss the lips that seemed to caress her through a cloud of hair, but
+her expression was sad and her listless movements were like a withered
+flower's, as if there was no joy on earth that could lift her out of
+this dejection.
+
+After a few days, when the first impress of the change in her mode of
+life was over, the old outbreaks that had so often disturbed their
+former dwelling began again in the luxurious palace.
+
+Renovales found her in the dining-room with her head in her hands,
+crying, but unwilling to explain the cause of her tears. When he tried
+to take her in his arms, caressing her like a child, the little woman
+became as agitated as if she had received an insult.
+
+"Let me go!" she cried with a hostile look. "Don't touch me. Go away!"
+
+At other times he looked all over the house for her in vain, questioning
+Milita who, accustomed to her mother's outbreaks and made selfish by her
+girlish strength, paid little attention to her and kept on playing with
+her dolls.
+
+"I don't know, papa; she's probably crying up stairs," she would answer
+naively.
+
+And in some corner of the upper story, in the bedroom, beside the bed or
+among the clothes in the wardrobe, the husband would find her, sitting
+on the floor with her chin in her hands, her eyes fixed on the wall as
+if she were looking at something invisible and mysterious that only she
+could see. She was not crying, her eyes were dry and enlarged with an
+expression of terror, and her husband tried in vain to attract her
+attention. She remained motionless, cold, indifferent to his caresses,
+as if he were a stranger, as if there were a hopeless gap between them.
+
+"I want to die," she said in a serious, tense tone. "I am of no use in
+the world; I want to rest."
+
+The deadly resignation would change a moment later into furious
+antagonism. Renovales could never tell how the quarrel began. The most
+insignificant word on his part, the expression of his face, silence
+even, was all that was needed to bring on the storm. Josephina began to
+speak with a taunting accent that made her words cut like cold steel.
+She found fault with the painter for what he did and what he did not do,
+for his most trifling habits, for what he painted, and presently,
+extending the radius of her insults to include the whole world, she
+broke out into denunciations of the distinguished people who formed her
+husband's clientele and brought him such profits. He might be satisfied
+with painting the portraits of those people, disreputable society men
+and women. Her mother, who was in close touch with that society, had
+told her many stories about them. The women she knew still better;
+almost all of them had been her companions at boarding-school or her
+friends. They had married to make sport of their husbands; they all had
+a past, they were worse than the women who walked the streets at night.
+This house with all its facade of laurels and its gold letters was a
+brothel. One of these fine days she would come into the studio and throw
+them into the street to have their pictures painted somewhere else.
+
+"For God's sake, Josephina," Renovales murmured with a troubled voice,
+"don't talk like that. Don't think of such outrageous things. I don't
+see how you can talk that way. Milita will hear us."
+
+Now that her nervous anger was exhausted, Josephina would burst into
+tears and Renovales would have to leave the table and take her to bed,
+where she lay, crying out for the hundredth time that she wanted to die.
+
+This life was even more intolerable because he was faithful to his wife,
+because his love, mingled with habit and routine, kept him firmly
+devoted to her.
+
+At the end of the afternoon, several of his friends used to gather in
+his studio, among them the jolly Cotoner who had moved to Madrid. When
+the twilight crept in through the huge window and made them all prone to
+friendly confidences, Renovales always made the same statement.
+
+"As a boy I had my good times just like anyone else, but since I was
+married I have never had anything to do with any woman except my own
+wife. I am proud to say so."
+
+And the big man drew himself up to his full height and stroked his
+beard, as proud of his faithfulness to his wife as other men are of
+their good fortune in love.
+
+When they talked about beautiful women in his presence, or looked at
+portraits of great foreign beauties, the master did not conceal his
+approval.
+
+"Very beautiful! Very pretty to paint!"
+
+His enthusiasm over beauty never went beyond the limits of art. There
+was only one woman in the world for him, his wife; the others were
+models.
+
+He, who carried in his mind a perfect orgy of flesh, who worshiped the
+nude with religious fervor, reserved all his manly homage for his wife
+who grew constantly more sickly, more gloomy, and waited with the
+patience of a lover for a moment of calm, a ray of sunlight among the
+incessant storms.
+
+The doctors, who admitted their inability to cure the nervous disorder
+that was consuming the wife, had hopes of a sudden change and
+recommended to the husband that he should be extremely kind to her. This
+only increased his patient gentleness. They attributed the nervous
+trouble to the birth and nursing of the child, that had broken her weak
+health; they suspected, too, the existence of some unknown cause that
+kept the sick woman in constant excitement.
+
+Renovales, who studied his wife closely in his eagerness to recover
+peace in his house, soon discovered the true cause of her illness.
+
+Milita was growing up; already she was a woman. She was fourteen years
+old and wore long skirts, and her healthy beauty was beginning to
+attract the glances of men.
+
+"One of these days they'll carry her off," said the master laughing.
+And his wife, when she heard him talking about marriage, making
+conjectures on his future son-in-law, closed her eyes and said in a
+tense voice, that revealed her insuperable obstinacy:
+
+"She shall marry anyone she wants to,--except a painter. I would rather
+see her dead than that."
+
+It was then Renovales divined his wife's true illness. It was jealousy,
+a terrific, deadly, ruinous jealousy; it was the sadness of realizing
+that she was sickly. She was certain of her husband; she knew his
+declarations of faithfulness to her. But when the painter spoke of his
+artistic interests in her presence, he did not hide his worship of
+beauty, his religious cult of form. Even if he was silent, she
+penetrated his thoughts; she read in him that fervor which dated from
+his youth and had grown greater as the years went by. When she looked at
+the statues of sovereign nakedness that decorated the studios, when she
+glanced through the albums of pictures where the light of flesh shone
+brightly amid the shadows of the engraving, she compared them mentally
+with her own form emaciated by illness.
+
+Renovales' eyes that seemed to worship every beauty of form were the
+same eyes that saw her in all her ugliness. That man could never love
+her. His faithfulness was pity, perhaps habit, unconscious virtue. She
+could not believe that it was love. This illusion might be possible with
+another man, but he was an artist. By day he worshiped beauty; at night
+he was brought face to face with ugliness, with physical wretchedness.
+
+She was constantly tormented by jealousy, that embittered her mind and
+consumed her life, a jealousy that was inconsolable for the very reason
+that it had no real foundation.
+
+The consciousness of her ugliness brought with it a sadness, an
+insatiable envy of everyone, a desire to die but to kill the world
+first, that she might drag it down with her in her fall.
+
+Her husband's caresses irritated her like an insult. Maybe he thought he
+loved her, maybe his advances were in good faith, but she read his
+thoughts and she found there her irresistible enemy, the rival that
+overshadowed her with her beauty. And there was no remedy for this. She
+was married to a man who, as long as he lived, would be faithful to his
+religion of beauty. How well she remembered the days when she had
+refused to allow her husband to paint her youthful body! If youth and
+beauty would but come back to her, she would recklessly cast off all her
+veils, would stand in the middle of the studio as arrogantly as a
+bacchante, crying,
+
+"Paint! Satisfy yourself with my flesh, and whenever you think of your
+eternal beloved, whom you call Beauty, fancy that you see her with my
+face, that she has my body!"
+
+It was a terrible misfortune to be the wife of an artist. She would
+never marry her daughter to a painter; she would rather see her dead.
+Men who carry with them the demon of form, cannot live in peace and
+happiness except with a companion who is eternally young, eternally
+fair.
+
+Her husband's fidelity made her desperate. That chaste artist was always
+musing over the memory of naked beauties, fancying pictures he did not
+dare to paint for fear of her. With her sick woman's penetration, she
+seemed to read this longing in her husband's face. She would have
+preferred certain infidelity, to see him in love with another woman, mad
+with passion. He might return from such a wandering outside the bonds of
+matrimony, wearied and humble, begging her forgiveness; but from the
+other, he would never return.
+
+When Renovates discovered the cause of her sadness, he tenderly
+undertook to cure his wife's mental disorder. He avoided speaking of his
+artistic interests in her presence; he discovered terrible defects in
+the fair ladies who sought him as a portrait painter; he praised
+Josephina's spiritual beauty; he painted pictures of her, putting her
+features on the canvas, but beautifying them with, subtle skill.
+
+She smiled, with that eternal condescension that a woman has for the
+most stupendous, most shameful deceits, as long as they flatter her.
+
+"It's you," said Renovales, "your face, your charm, your air of
+distinction. I really don't think I have made you as beautiful as you
+are."
+
+She continued to smile, but soon her look grew hard, her lips tightened
+and the shadow spread little by little across her face.
+
+She fixed her eyes on the painter's as if she were scrutinizing his
+thoughts.
+
+It was a lie. Her husband was flattering her; he thought he loved her,
+but only his flesh was faithful. The invincible enemy, the eternal
+beloved, was mistress of his mind.
+
+Tortured by this mental unfaithfulness and by the rage which her
+helplessness produced, she would gradually fall into one of the nervous
+storms that broke out in a shower of tears and a thunder of insults and
+recriminations.
+
+Renovales' life was a hell at the very time when he possessed the glory
+and wealth which he had dreamed of so many years, building on them his
+hope of happiness.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+It was three o'clock in the afternoon when the painter went home after
+his luncheon with the Hungarian.
+
+As he entered the dining-room, before going to the studio, he saw two
+women with their hats and veils on who looked as if they were getting
+ready to go out. One of them, as tall as the painter, threw her arms
+around his neck.
+
+"Papa, dear, we waited for you until nearly two o'clock. Did you have a
+good luncheon?"
+
+And she kissed him noisily, rubbing her fresh, rosy cheeks against the
+master's gray beard.
+
+Renovales smiled good naturedly under this shower of caresses. Ah, his
+Milita! She was the only joy in that gloomy, showy house. It was she who
+sweetened that atmosphere of tedious strife which seemed to emanate from
+the sick woman. He looked at his daughter with an air of comic
+gallantry.
+
+"Very pretty; yes, I swear you are very pretty to-day. You are a perfect
+Rubens, my dear, a brunette Rubens. And where are we going to show off?"
+
+He looked with a father's pride at that strong, rosy body, in which the
+transition to womanhood was marked by a sort of passing delicacy--the
+result of her rapid growth--and a dark circle around her eyes. Her soft,
+mysterious glance was that of a woman who is beginning to understand the
+meaning of life. She dressed with a sort of exotic elegance; her clothes
+had a masculine appearance; her mannish collar and tie were in keeping
+with the rigid energy of her movements, with her wide-soled English
+boots, and the violent swing of her legs that opened her skirts like a
+compass when she walked, more intent on speed and a heavy step than on a
+graceful carriage. The master admired her healthy beauty. What a
+splendid specimen! The race would not die out with her. She was like
+him, wholly like him; if he had been a woman, he would have been like
+his Milita.
+
+She kept on talking, without taking her arms from her father's
+shoulders, with her eyes, tremulous like molten gold, fixed on the
+master.
+
+She was going for her daily walk with "Miss," a two hours' tramp through
+the Castellana and the Retiro, without stopping a moment to sit down,
+taking a peripatetic lesson in English on the way. For the first time
+Renovates turned around to speak to "Miss," a stout woman with a red,
+wrinkled face who, when she smiled, showed a set of teeth that shone
+like yellow dominoes. In the studio Renovales and his friends often
+laughed at "Miss's" appearance and eccentricities, at her red wig that
+was placed on her head as carelessly as a hat, at her terrible false
+teeth, at her bonnets that she made herself out of chance bits of ribbon
+and discarded ornaments, of her chronic lack of appetite, that forced
+her to live on beer, which kept her in a continual state of confusion,
+which was revealed in her exaggerated curtsies. Soft and heavy from
+drink, she was alarmed at the approach of the hour of the walk, a daily
+torment for her, as she tried painfully to keep up with Milita's long
+strides. Seeing the painter looking at her, she turned even redder and
+made three profound curtsies.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Renovales, oh, sir!"
+
+And she did not call him "Lord," because the master greeting her with a
+nod, forgot her presence and began to talk again with his daughter.
+
+Milita was eager to hear about her father's luncheon with Tekli. And so
+he had had some Chianti? Selfish man! When he knew how much she liked
+it! He ought to have let them know sooner that he would not be home.
+Fortunately Cotoner was at the house and mamma had made him stay, so
+that they would not have to lunch alone. Their old friend had gone to
+the kitchen and prepared one of those dishes he had learned to make in
+the days when he was a landscape-painter. Milita observed that all
+landscape-painters knew something about cooking. Their outdoor life, the
+necessities of their wandering existence among country inns and huts,
+defying poverty, gave them a liking for this art.
+
+They had had a very pleasant luncheon; mamma had laughed at Cotoner's
+jokes, who was always in good humor, but during the dessert, when
+Soldevilla, Renovales' favorite pupil, came, she had felt indisposed and
+had disappeared to hide her eyes swimming with tears and her breast that
+heaved with sobs.
+
+"She's probably upstairs," said the girl with a sort of indifference,
+accustomed to these outbreaks. "Good-by, papa, dear, a kiss. Cotoner and
+Soldevilla are waiting for you in the studio. Another kiss. Let me bite
+you."
+
+And after fixing her little teeth gently in one of the master's cheeks,
+she ran out, followed by Miss, who was already puffing in anticipation
+at the thought of the tiresome walk.
+
+Renovales remained motionless as if he hesitated to shake off the
+atmosphere of affection in which his daughter enveloped him. Milita was
+his, wholly his. She loved her mother, but her affection was cold in
+comparison with the ardent passion she felt for him--that vague,
+instinctive preference girls feel for their fathers and which is, as it
+were, a forecast of the worship the man they love will later inspire in
+them.
+
+For a moment he thought of looking for Josephina to console her, but
+after a brief reflection, he gave up the idea. It probably was nothing;
+his daughter was not disturbed; a sudden fit such as she usually had. If
+he went upstairs he would run the risk of an unpleasant scene that would
+spoil the afternoon, rob him of his desire to work and banish the
+youthful light-heartedness that filled him after his luncheon with
+Tekli.
+
+He turned his steps towards the last studio, the only one that deserved
+the name, for it was there he worked, and he saw Cotoner sitting in a
+huge armchair, the seat of which sagged under his corpulent frame, with
+his elbows resting on the oaken arms, his waistcoat unbuttoned to
+relieve his well-filled paunch, his head sunk between his shoulders, his
+face red and sweating, his eyes half closed with the sweet joy of
+digestion in that comfortable atmosphere heated by a huge stove.
+
+Cotoner was getting old; his mustache was white and his head was bald,
+but his face was as rosy and shining as a child's. He breathed the
+placidness of a respectable old bachelor whose only love is for good
+living and who appreciates the digestive sleepiness of the
+boaconstrictor as the greatest of happiness.
+
+He was tired of living in Rome. Commissions were scarce. The Popes lived
+longer than the Biblical patriarchs. The chromo portraits of the Pontiff
+had simply forced him out of business. Besides, he was old and the young
+painters who came to Rome did not know him; they were poor fellows who
+looked on him as a clown, and never laid aside their seriousness except
+to make sport of him. His time had passed. The echoes of Mariano's
+triumphs at home had come to his ears, had determined him to move to
+Madrid. Life was the same everywhere. He had friends in Madrid, too. And
+here he had continued the life he had led in Rome, without any effort,
+feeling a kind of longing for glory in that narrow personality which
+had made him a mere day-laborer in art, as if his relations with
+Renovales imposed on him the duty of seeking a place near his in the
+world of painting.
+
+He had gone back to landscapes, never winning any greater success than
+the simple admirations of wash-women and brickmakers who gathered around
+his easel in the suburbs of Madrid, whispering to each other that the
+gentleman who wore on his lapel the variegated button of his numerous
+Papal Orders, must be a famous old "buck," one of the great painters the
+papers talked about. Renovales had secured for him two honorable
+mentions at the Exhibitions and after this victory, shared with all the
+young chaps who were just beginning, Cotoner settled down in the rut, to
+rest forever, counting that the mission of his life was fulfilled.
+
+Life in Madrid was no more difficult for him than in Rome. He slept at
+the house of a priest whom he had known in Italy, and had accompanied on
+his tours as Papal representative. This chaplain, who was employed in
+the office of the Rota, considered it a great honor to entertain the
+artist, recalling his friendly relations with the cardinals and
+believing that he was in correspondence with the Pope himself.
+
+They had agreed on a sum which he was to pay for his lodging, but the
+priest did not seem to be in any hurry for payment; he would soon give
+him a commission for a painting for some nuns for whom he was confessor.
+
+The eating problem offered still less difficulty for Cotoner. He had the
+days of the week divided among various rich families noted for their
+piety, whom he had met in Rome during the great Spanish pilgrimages.
+They were wealthy miners from Bilbao, gentlemen farmers from Andalusia,
+old marchionesses who thought about God a great deal, but continued to
+live their comfortable life to which they gave a serious tone by the
+respectable color of devotion.
+
+The painter felt closely attached to this little group; they were
+serious, religious and they ate well. Everyone called him "good
+Cotoner." The ladies smiled with gratitude when he presented them with a
+rosary or some other article of devotion brought from Rome. If they
+expressed the desire of obtaining some dispensation from the Vatican, he
+would offer to write to "his friend the cardinal." The husbands, glad to
+entertain an artist so cheaply, consulted him about the plan for a new
+chapel or the designs for an altar, and on their saint's day they would
+receive with a condescending mien some present from Cotoner--a "little
+daub," a landscape painted on a piece of wood, that often needed an
+explanation before they could understand what it was meant for.
+
+At dinners he was a constant source of amusement for these people of
+solid principles and measured words, with his stories of the strange
+doings of the "Monsignori" or the "Eminences" he used to know in Rome.
+They listened to these jokes with a sort of unction, however dubious
+they were, seeing that they came from such respectable personages.
+
+When the round of invitations was interrupted by illness or absence, and
+Cotoner lacked a place to dine, he stayed at Renovales' house without
+waiting for an invitation. The master wanted him to live with them, but
+he did not accept. He was very fond of the family; Milita played with
+him as if he were an old dog, Josephina felt a sort of affection for
+him, because his presence reminded her of the good old days in Rome. But
+Cotoner, in spite of this, seemed to be somewhat reluctant, divining the
+storms that darkened the master's life. He preferred his free existence,
+to which he adapted himself with the ease of a parasite. After dinner
+was over, he would listen to the weighty discussions between learned
+priests and serious old church-goers, nodding his approval, and an hour
+later he would be jesting impiously in some cafe or other with painters,
+actors and journalists. He knew everybody; he only needed to speak to an
+artist twice and he would call him by his first name and swear that he
+loved and admired him from the bottom of his heart. When Renovales came
+into the studio, he shook off his drowsiness and stretched out his short
+legs so that he could touch the floor and get out of the chair.
+
+"Did they tell you, Mariano? A magnificent dish! I made them an
+Andalusian pot-pourri! They were tickled to death over it!"
+
+He was enthusiastic over his culinary achievement as if all his merits
+were summed up in this skill. Afterwards, while Renovales was handing
+his coat and hat to the servant who followed him, Cotoner with the
+curiosity of an intimate friend who wants to know all the details of his
+idol's life, questioned him about his luncheon with the foreigner.
+
+Renovales lay down on a divan deep as a niche, between two bookcases and
+lined with piles of cushions. As they spoke of Tekli, they recalled
+friends in Rome, painters of different nationalities who twenty years
+before had walked with their heads high, following the star of hope as
+if they were hypnotized. Renovales, in his pride in his strength,
+incapable of hypocritical modesty, declared that he was the only one who
+had succeeded. Poor Tekli was a professor; his copy of Velasquez
+amounted to nothing more than the work of a patient cart horse in art.
+
+"Do you think so?" asked Cotoner doubtfully. "Is his work so poor?"
+
+His selfishness kept him from saying a word against anyone; he had no
+faith in criticism, he believed blindly in praise; thereby preserving
+his reputation as a good fellow, which gave him the entree everywhere
+and made his life easy. The figure of the Hungarian was fixed in his
+memory and made him think of a series of luncheons before he left
+Madrid.
+
+"Good afternoon, master."
+
+It was Soldevilla who came out from behind a screen with his hands
+clasped behind his back under the tail of his short sack coat, his head
+in the air, tortured by the excessive height of his stiff, shining
+collar, throwing out his chest so as to show off better his velvet
+waistcoat. His thinness and his small stature were made up for by the
+length of his blond mustache that curled around his pink little nose as
+if it were trying to reach the straight, scraggly bangs on his forehead.
+This Soldevilla was Renovales' favorite pupil--"his weakness" Cotoner
+called him. The master had fought a great battle to win him the
+fellowship at Rome; afterward he had given him the prize at several
+exhibitions.
+
+He looked on him almost as a son, attracted perhaps by the contrast
+between his own rough strength and the weakness of that artistic dandy,
+always proper, always amiable, who consulted this master about
+everything, even if afterwards he did not pay much attention to his
+advice. When he criticized his fellow painters, he did it with a
+venomous suavity, with a feminine finesse. Renovales laughed at his
+appearance and his habits and Cotoner joined in. He was like china,
+always shining; you could not find the least speck of dust on him; you
+were sure he slept in a cupboard. These present-day painters! The two
+old artists recalled the disorder of their youth, their Bohemian
+carelessness, with long beards and huge hats, all their odd
+extravagances to distinguish them from the rest of men, forming a world
+by themselves. They felt out of humor with these painters of the last
+batch--proper, prudent, incapable of doing anything absurd, copying the
+fashions of the idle and presenting the appearance of State
+functionaries, clerks, who wielded the brush.
+
+His greeting over, Soldevilla fairly overwhelmed the master with his
+effusive praise. He had been admiring the portrait of the Countess of
+Alberca.
+
+"A perfect marvel, master. The best thing you have painted, and it's
+only half done, too."
+
+This praise aroused Renovales. He got up, shoved aside the screen and
+pulled out an easel that held a large canvas, until it was opposite the
+light that came in through the wide window.
+
+On a gray background stood a woman dressed in white, with that majesty
+of beauty that is accustomed to admiration. The aigrette of feathers and
+diamonds seemed to tremble on her tawny yellow curls, the curve of her
+breasts was outlined through the lace of her low-necked gown, her gloves
+reached above her elbows, in one of her hands she held a costly fan, in
+the other, a dark cloak, lined with flame-colored satin, that slipped
+from her bare shoulders, on the point of falling. The lower part of the
+figure was merely outlined in charcoal on the white canvas. The head,
+almost finished, seemed to look at the three men with its proud eyes,
+cold, but with a false coldness that bespoke a hidden passion within, a
+dead volcano that might come to life at any moment.
+
+She was a tall, stately woman, with a charming, well-proportioned
+figure, who seemed to keep the freshness of youth, thanks to the
+healthy, comfortable life she led. The corners of her eyes were narrowed
+with a tired fold.
+
+Cotoner looked at her from his seat with chaste calmness, commenting
+tranquilly on her beauty, feeling above temptation.
+
+"It's she, you've caught her, Mariano. She has been a great woman."
+
+Renovales appeared offended at this comment.
+
+"She is," he said with a sort of hostility. "She is still."
+
+Cotoner could not argue with his idol and he hastened to correct
+himself.
+
+"She is a charming woman, very attractive, yes sir, and very stylish.
+They say she is talented and cannot bear to let men who worship her
+suffer. She has certainly enjoyed life."
+
+Renovales began to bristle again, as if these words cut him.
+
+"Nonsense! lies, calumnies!" he said angrily. "Inventions of some young
+fellows who spread these disgraceful reports because they were
+rejected."
+
+Cotoner began to explain away what he had said. He did not know
+anything, he had heard it. The ladies at whose houses he dined spoke ill
+of the Alberca woman, but perhaps it was merely woman's gossip. There
+was a moment of silence and Renovales, as if he wanted to change the
+subject of conversation, turned to Soldevilla.
+
+"And you, aren't you painting any longer? I always find you here in
+working hours."
+
+He smiled somewhat knowingly as he said this, while the youth blushed
+and tried to make excuses. He was working hard, but every day he felt
+the need of dropping into his master's studio for a minute before he
+went to his own.
+
+It was a habit he had formed when he was a beginner, in that period, the
+best in his life, when he studied beside the great painter in a studio
+far less sumptuous than this.
+
+"And Milita? Did you see her?" continued Renovales with a good-natured
+smile that had not lost its playfulness. "Didn't she 'kid' you, for
+wearing that dazzling new tie?"
+
+Soldevilla smiled too. He had been in the dining-room with Dona
+Josephina and Milita and the latter had made fun of him as usual. But
+she did not mean anything; the master knew that Milita and he treated
+each other like brother and sister.
+
+More than once when she was a little tot and he a lad, he had acted as
+her horse, trotting around the old studio with the little scamp on his
+back, pulling his hair and pounding him with her tiny fists.
+
+"She's very cute," interrupted Cotoner. "She is the most attractive, the
+best girl I know."
+
+"And the unequaled Lopez de Sosa?" asked the master, once more in a
+playful tone. "Didn't that 'chauffeur' that drives us crazy with his
+automobiles come to-day?"
+
+Soldevilla's smile disappeared. He grew pale and his eyes flashed
+spitefully. No, he had not seen the gentleman. According to the ladies,
+he was busy repairing an automobile that had broken down on the Pardo
+road. And as if the recollection of this friend of the family was trying
+for him and he wished to avoid any further allusions to him, he said
+"good-by" to the master. He was going to work; he must take advantage of
+the two hours of sunlight that were left. But before he went out he
+stopped to say another word in praise of the portrait of the countess.
+
+The two friends remained alone for a long while in silence. Renovales,
+buried in the shadow of that niche of Persian stuffs with which his
+divan was canopied, gazed at the picture.
+
+"Is she going to come to-day?" asked Cotoner, pointing to the canvas.
+
+Renovales shrugged his shoulders. To-day or the next day; it was
+impossible to do any serious work with that woman.
+
+He expected her that afternoon; but he would not feel surprised if she
+failed to keep her appointment. For nearly a month he had been unable to
+get in two days in succession. She was always engaged; she was president
+of societies for the education and emancipation of woman; she was
+constantly planning festivals and raffles; the activity of a tired woman
+of society, the fluttering of a wild bird that made her want to be
+everywhere at the same time, without the will to withdraw when once she
+was started in the current of feminine excitement. Suddenly the painter
+whose eyes were fixed on the portrait gave a cry of enthusiasm.
+
+"What a woman, Pepe! What a woman to paint!"
+
+His eyes seemed to lay bare the beauty that stood on the canvas in all
+its aristocratic grandeur. They strove to penetrate the mystery of that
+covering of lace and silk, to see the color and the lines of the form
+that was hardly revealed through the gown. This mental reconstruction
+was helped by the bare shoulders and the curve of her breasts that
+seemed to tremble at the edge of her dress, separated by a line of soft
+shadow.
+
+"That's just what I told your wife," said the Bohemian naively. "If you
+paint beautiful women, like the countess, it is merely for the sake of
+painting them and not that you would think of seeing in them anything
+more than a model."
+
+"Aha! So my wife has been talking to you about that!"
+
+Cotoner hastened to set his mind at ease, fearing his digestion might be
+disturbed. A mere trifle, nervousness on the part of poor Josephina, who
+saw the dark side of everything in her illness.
+
+She had referred during the luncheon to the Alberca woman and her
+portrait. She did not seem to be very fond of her, in spite of the fact
+that she had been her companion in boarding-school. She felt as other
+women did; the countess was an enemy, who inspired them with fear. But
+he had calmed her and finally succeeded in making her smile faintly.
+There was no use in talking about that any longer.
+
+But Renovales did not share his friend's optimism. He was well aware of
+his wife's state of mind; he understood now the motive that had made her
+flee from the table, to take refuge upstairs and to weep and long for
+death. She hated Concha as she did all the women who entered his studio.
+But this impression of sadness did not last very long in the painter; he
+was used to his wife's susceptibility. Besides, the consciousness of his
+faithfulness calmed him. His conscience was clean, and Josephina might
+believe what she would. It would only be one more injustice and he was
+resigned to endure his slavery without complaint.
+
+In order to forget his trouble, he began to talk about painting. The
+recollection of his conversation with Tekli enlivened him, for Tekli had
+been traveling all over Europe and was well acquainted with what the
+most famous masters were thinking and painting.
+
+"I'm getting old, Cotoner. Did you think I didn't know it? No, don't
+protest. I know that I am not old; forty-three years. I mean that I have
+lost my gait and cannot get started. It's a long time since I have done
+anything new; I always strike the same note. You know that some people,
+envious of my reputation are always throwing that defect in my face,
+like a vile insult."
+
+And the painter, with the selfishness of great artists who always think
+that they are neglected and the world begrudges them their glory,
+complained at the slavery that was imposed upon him by his good fortune.
+Making money! What a calamity for art! If the world were governed by
+his common sense, artists with talent would be supported by the State,
+which would generously provide for all their needs and whims. There
+would be no need of bothering about making a living. "Paint what you
+want to, and as you please." Then great things would be done and art
+would advance with giant strides, not constrained to debase itself by
+flattering public vulgarity and the ignorance of the rich. But now, to
+be a celebrated painter it was necessary to make money and this could
+not be done except by portraits, opening a shop, painting the first one
+that appeared, without the right of choice. Accursed painting! In
+writing, poverty was a merit. It stood for truth and honesty. But the
+painter must be rich, his talent was judged by his profits. The fame of
+his pictures was connected with the idea of thousands of dollars. When
+people talked about his work they always said, "He's making such and
+such a sum of money," and to keep up this wealth, the indispensable
+companion of his glory, he had to paint by the job, cringing before the
+vulgar throng that pays.
+
+Renovales walked excitedly around the portrait. Sometimes this laborer's
+work was tolerable, when he was painting beautiful women and men whose
+faces had the light of intelligence. But the vulgar politicians, the
+rich men that looked like porters, the stout dames with dead faces that
+he had to paint! When he let his love for truth overcome him and copied
+the model as he saw it, he won another enemy, who paid the bill
+grumblingly and went away to tell everyone that Renovales was not so
+great as people thought. To avoid this he lied in his painting, having
+recourse to the methods employed by other mediocre artists and this base
+procedure tormented his conscience, as if he were robbing his inferiors
+who deserved respect for the very reason that they were less endowed for
+artistic production than he.
+
+"Besides, that is not painting, the whole of painting. We think we are
+artists because we can reproduce a face, and the face is only a part of
+the body. We tremble with fear at the thought of the nude. We have
+forgotten it. We speak of it with respect and fear, as we would of
+something religious, worthy of worship, but something we never see close
+at hand. A large part of our talent is the talent of a dry-goods clerk.
+Cloth, nothing but cloth; garments. The body must be carefully wrapped
+up or we flee from it as from a danger."
+
+He ceased his nervous walking to and fro and stopped in front of the
+picture, fixing his gaze on it.
+
+"Imagine, Pepe," he said in an undertone, looking first instinctively
+toward the door, with that eternal fear of being heard by his wife in
+the midst of his artistic raptures. "Imagine, if that woman would
+undress; if I could paint her as she certainly is."
+
+Cotoner burst into laughter with a look like a knavish friar.
+
+"Wonderful, Mariano, a masterpiece. But she won't. I'm sure she would
+refuse to undress, though I admit she isn't always particular."
+
+Renovales shook his fists in protest.
+
+"And why won't they? What a rut! What vulgarity!"
+
+In his artistic selfishness he fancied that the world had been created
+without any other purpose than supporting painters, the rest of humanity
+was made to serve them as models, and he was shocked at this
+incomprehensible modesty. Ah, where could they find now the beauties of
+Greece, the calm models of sculptors, the pale Venetian ladies painted
+by Titian, the graceful Flemish women of Rubens, and the dainty,
+sprightly beauties of Goya? Beauty was eclipsed forever behind the veils
+of hypocrisy and false modesty. Women had one lover to-day, another
+to-morrow and still they blushed at recalling the woman of other times,
+far more pure than they, who did not hesitate to reveal to the public
+admiration the perfect work of God, the chastity of the nude.
+
+Renovales lay down on the divan again, and in the twilight he talked
+confidentially with Cotoner in a subdued voice, sometimes looking toward
+the door as if he feared being overheard.
+
+For some time he had been dreaming of a masterpiece. He had it in his
+imagination complete even to the least details. He saw it, closing his
+eyes, just at it would be, if he ever succeeded in painting it. It was
+Phryne, the famous beauty of Athens, appearing naked before the crowd of
+pilgrims on the beach of Delphi. All the suffering humanity of Greece
+walked on the shore of the sea toward the famous temple, seeking divine
+intervention for the relief of their ills, cripples with distorted
+limbs, repulsive lepers, men swollen with dropsy, pale, suffering women,
+trembling old men, youths disfigured in hideous expressions, withered
+arms like bare bones, shapeless elephant legs, all the phases of a
+perverted Nature, the piteous, desperate expressions of human pain. When
+they see on the beach Phryne, the glory of Greece, whose beauty was a
+national pride, the pilgrims stop and gaze upon her, turning their backs
+to the temple, that outlines its marble columns in the background of the
+parched mountains; and the beautiful woman, filled with pity by this
+procession of suffering, desires to brighten their sadness, to cast a
+handful of health and beauty among their wretched furrows, and tears off
+her veils, giving them the royal alms of her nakedness. The white,
+radiant body is outlined on the dark blue of the sea. The wind scatters
+her hair like golden serpents on her ivory shoulders; the waves that die
+at her feet, toss upon her stars of foam that make her skin tremble with
+the caress from her amber neck down to her rosy feet. The wet sand,
+polished and bright as a mirror, reproduces the sovereign nakedness,
+inverted and confused in serpentine lines that take on the shimmer of
+the rainbow as they disappear. And the pilgrims, on their knees, in the
+ecstasy of worship, stretch out their arms toward the mortal goddess,
+believing that Beauty and eternal Health have come to meet them.
+
+Renovales sat up and grasped Cotoner's arm as he described his future
+picture, and his friend nodded his approval gravely, impressed by the
+description.
+
+"Very fine! Sublime, Mariano!"
+
+But the master became dejected again after this flash of enthusiasm.
+
+The task was very difficult. He would have to go and take up quarters on
+the shore of the Mediterranean, on some secluded beach at Valencia or in
+Catalonia; he would have to build a cabin on the very edge of the sand
+where the water breaks with its bright reflections, and take woman after
+woman there, a hundred if it was necessary, in order to study the
+whiteness of their skin against the blue of the sea and sky, until he
+found the divine body of the Phryne he had dreamed.
+
+"Very difficult," murmured Renovales. "I tell you it is very difficult.
+There are so many obstacles to struggle against."
+
+Cotoner leaned forward with a confidential expression.
+
+"And besides, there's the mistress," he said in a quiet voice, looking
+at the door with a sort of fear. "I don't believe Josephina would be
+very much pleased with this picture and its pack of models."
+
+The master lowered his head.
+
+"If you only knew, Pepe! If you could see the life I lead every day!"
+
+"I know what it is," Cotoner hastened to say, "or rather, I can imagine.
+Don't tell me anything."
+
+And in his haste to avoid the sad confidences of his friend, there was a
+great deal of selfishness, the desire not to disturb his peaceful calm
+with other men's sorrows that excite only a distant interest.
+
+Renovales spoke after a long silence. He often wondered whether an
+artist ought to be married or single. Other men, of weak, hesitating
+character needed the support of a comrade, the atmosphere of a family.
+
+He recalled with relish the first few months of his married life; but
+since then it had weighed on him like a chain. He did not deny the
+existence of love; he needed the sweet company of a woman in order to
+live, but with intermissions, without the endless imprisonment of common
+life. Artists like himself ought to be free, he was sure of it.
+
+"Oh, Pepe, if I had only stayed like you, master of my time and my work,
+without having to think what my family will say if they see me painting
+this or that, what great things I should have done!"
+
+The old man, who had failed in all his tasks, was going to say something
+when the door of the studio opened and Renovales' servant came in, a
+little man with fat red cheeks and a high voice which, according to
+Cotoner, sounded like the messenger of a monastery.
+
+"The countess."
+
+Cotoner jumped out of his armchair. Those models didn't like to see
+people in the studio. How could he get out? Renovales helped him to find
+his hat, coat and cane, which with his usual carelessness he had left in
+different corners of the studio.
+
+The master pushed him out of a door that led into the garden. Then, when
+he was alone, he ran to an old Venetian mirror, and looked at himself
+for a moment in its deep, bluish surface, smoothing his curly gray hair
+with his fingers.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+She came in with a great rustling of silks and laces, her least
+step accompanied by the _frou-frou_ of her skirts, scattering various
+perfumes, like the breath of an exotic garden.
+
+"Good afternoon, _mon cher maitre_."
+
+As she looked at him through her tortoise-shell lorgnette, hanging from
+a gold chain, the gray amber of her eyes took on an insolent stare
+through the glasses, a strange expression, half caressing, half mocking.
+
+He must pardon her for being so late. She was sorry for her lack of
+attention, but she was the busiest woman in Madrid. The things she had
+done since luncheon! Signing and examining papers with the secretary of
+the "Women's League," a conference with the carpenter and the foreman
+(two rough fellows who fairly devoured her with their eyes), who had
+charge of putting up the booths for the great fair for the benefit of
+destitute working women; a call on the president of the Cabinet, a
+somewhat dissolute old gentleman, in spite of his gravity, who received
+her with the airs of an old-fashioned gallant, kissing her hand, as they
+used to in a minuet.
+
+"We have lost the afternoon, haven't we, _maitre?_ There's hardly sun
+enough to work by now. Besides, I didn't bring my maid to help me."
+
+She pointed with her lorgnette to the door of an alcove that served as a
+dressing-room for the models and where she kept the evening gown and the
+flame-colored cloak in which he was painting her.
+
+Renovales, after looking furtively at the entrance of the studio,
+assumed an arrogant air of swaggering gallantry, such as he used to have
+in his youth in Rome, free and obstreperous.
+
+"You needn't give up on that account. If you will let me, I'll act as
+maid for you."
+
+The countess began to laugh loudly, throwing back her head and
+shoulders, showing her white throat that shook with merriment.
+
+"Oh, what a good joke! And how daring the master is getting. You don't
+know anything about such things, Renovales. All you can do is paint. You
+are not in practice."
+
+And in her accent of subtle irony, there was something like pity for the
+artist, removed from mundane things, whose conjugal virtue everyone
+knew. This seemed to offend him for he spoke to the countess very
+sharply as he picked up the palette and prepared the colors. There was
+no need of changing her dress; he would make use of what little daylight
+remained to work on the head.
+
+Concha took off her hat and then, before the same Venetian mirror in
+which the painter had looked at himself, began to touch up her hair. Her
+arms curved around her golden head, while Renovales contemplated the
+grace of her back, seeing at the same time her face and breast in the
+glass. She hummed as she arranged her hair, with her eyes fixed on their
+own reflection, not letting anything distract her in this important
+operation.
+
+That brilliant, striking golden hair was probably bleached. The painter
+was sure of it, but it did not seem less beautiful to him on that
+account. The beauties of Venice in the olden times used to dye their
+hair.
+
+The countess sat down in an armchair, a short distance from the easel.
+She felt tired and as long as he was not going to paint anything but her
+face, he would not be so cruel as to make her stand, as he did on days
+of real sittings. Renovales answered with monosyllables and shrugs of
+his shoulders. That was all right--for what they were going to do. An
+afternoon lost. He would limit himself to working on her hair and her
+forehead. She might take it easy, looking anywhere she wanted to.
+
+The master did not feel any desire to work either. A dull anger
+disturbed him; he was irritated by the ironical accent of the countess
+who saw in him a man different from other men, a strange being who was
+incapable of acting like the insipid young men who formed her court and
+many of whom, according to common gossip, were her lovers. A strange
+woman, provoking and cold! He felt like falling on her, in his rage at
+her offence, and beating her with the same scorn that he would a low
+woman, to make her feel his manly superiority.
+
+Of all the ladies whose pictures he had painted, none had disturbed his
+artistic calm as she had. He felt attracted by her mad jesting, by her
+almost childish levity, and at the same time he hated her for the
+pitying air with which she treated him. For her he was a good fellow,
+but very commonplace, who by some rare caprice of Nature possessed the
+gift of painting well.
+
+Renovales returned this scorn by insulting her mentally. That Countess
+of Alberca was a fine one. No wonder people talked about her. Perhaps
+when she appeared in his studio, always in a hurry and out of breath,
+she came from a private interview with some one of those young bloods
+that hung around her, attracted by her still fresh, alluring maturity.
+
+But if Concha spoke to him with her easy freedom, telling him of the
+sadness she said she felt and allowing herself to confide in him, as if
+they were united by a long standing friendship, that was enough to make
+the master change his thoughts immediately. She was a superior woman of
+ideals, condemned to live in a depressing aristocratic atmosphere. All
+the gossip about her was a calumny, a lie forged by envious people. She
+ought to be the companion of a superior man, of an artist.
+
+Renovales knew her history; he was proud of the friendly confidence she
+had had in him. She was the only daughter of a distinguished gentleman,
+a solemn jurist, and a violent Conservative, a minister in the most
+reactionary cabinets of the reign of Isabel II. She had been educated at
+the same school as Josephina, who in spite of the fact that Concha was
+four years her senior, retained a vivid recollection of her lively
+companion. "For mischief and deviltry you can't beat Conchita Salazar."
+It was thus that Renovales heard her name for the first time. Then when
+the artist and his wife had moved from Venice to Madrid, he learned that
+she had changed her name to that of the Countess of Alberca by marrying
+a man who might have been her father.
+
+He was an old courtier who performed his duties as a grandee of Spain
+with great conscientiousness, proud of his slavery to the royal family.
+His ambition was to belong to all the honorable orders of Europe and as
+soon as he was named to one of them, he had his picture painted, covered
+with scarfs and crosses, wearing the uniform of one of the traditional
+military Orders. His wife laughed to see him, so little, bald and
+solemn, with high boots, a dangling sword, his breast covered with
+trinkets, a white plumed helmet resting in his lap.
+
+During the life of isolation and privation with which Renovales
+struggled so courageously, the papers brought to the artist's wretched
+house the echoes of the triumphs of the "fair Countess of Alberca." Her
+name appeared in the first line of every account of an aristocratic
+function. Besides, they called her "enlightened," and talked about her
+literary culture, her classic education which she owed to her
+"illustrious father," now dead. And with this public news there reached
+the artist on the whispering wings of Madrid gossip other tales that
+represented the Countess of Alberca as consoling herself merrily for the
+mistake she had made in marrying an old man.
+
+At Court, they had taken her name from the lists, as a result of this
+reputation. Her husband took part at all the royal functions, for he did
+not have a chance every day to show off his load of honorary hardware,
+but she stayed at home, loathing these ceremonious affairs. Renovales
+had often heard her declare, dressed luxuriously and wearing costly
+jewels in her ears and on her breast, that she laughed at his set, that
+she was on the inside, she was an anarchist! And he laughed as he heard
+her, just as all men laughed at what they called the "ways" of the
+Alberca woman.
+
+When Renovales won success and, as a famous master, returned to those
+drawing rooms through which he had passed in his youth, he felt the
+attraction of the countess who in her character as a "woman of
+intellect," insisted on gathering celebrated men about her. Josephina
+did not accompany him in this return to society. She felt ill; contact
+with the same people in the same places tired her; she lacked the
+strength to undertake even the trips her doctors urged upon her.
+
+The countess enrolled the painter in her following, appearing offended
+when he failed to present himself at her house on the afternoons on
+which she received her friends. What ingratitude to show to such a
+fervent admirer! How she liked to exhibit him before her friends, as if
+he were a new jewel! "The painter Renovales, the famous master."
+
+At one of these afternoon receptions, the count spoke to Renovales with
+the serious air of a man who is crushed beneath his worldly honors.
+
+"Concha wants a portrait done by you, and I like to please her in every
+way. You can say when to begin. She is afraid to propose it to you and
+has commissioned me to do it. I know that your work is better than that
+of other painters. Paint her well, so that she may be pleased."
+
+And noticing that Renovales seemed rather offended at his patronizing
+familiarity, he added as if he were doing him another favor.
+
+"If you have success with Concha, you may paint my picture afterward. I
+am only waiting for the Grand Chrysanthemum of Japan. At the Government
+offices they tell me the titles will come one of these days."
+
+Renovales began the countess's portrait. The task was prolonged by that
+rattle-brained woman who always came late, alleging that she had been
+busy. Many days the artist did not take a stroke with his brush; they
+spent the time chatting. At other times the master listened in silence
+while she with her ceaseless volubility made fun of her friends and
+related their secret defects, their most intimate habits, their
+mysterious amours, with a kind of relish, as if all women were her
+enemies. In the midst of one of these confidential talks, she stopped
+and said with a shy expression and an ironical accent:
+
+"But I am probably shocking you, Mariano. You, who are a good husband, a
+staunch family-man."
+
+Renovales felt tempted to choke her. She was making fun of him; she
+looked on him as a man different from the rest of men, a sort of monk of
+painting. Eager to wound her, to return the blow, he interrupted once
+brutally in the midst of her merciless gossip.
+
+"Well, they talk about you, too, Concha. They say things that wouldn't
+be very pleasing to the count."
+
+He expected an outburst of anger, a protest, and all that resounded in
+the silence of the studio was a merry, reckless laugh that lasted a
+long time, stopping occasionally, only to begin again. Then she grew
+pensive, with the gentle sadness of women who are "misunderstood." She
+was very unhappy. She could tell him everything because he was a good
+friend. She had married when she was still a child; a terrible mistake.
+There was something else in the world besides the glare of fortune, the
+splendor of luxury and that count's coronet, which had stirred her
+school-girl's mind.
+
+"We have the right to a little love, and if not love, to a little joy.
+Don't you think so, Mariano?"
+
+Of course he thought so. And he declared it in such a way, looking at
+Concha with alarming eyes, that she finally laughed at his frankness and
+threatened him with her finger.
+
+"Take care, master. Don't forget that Josephina is my friend and if you
+go astray, I'll tell her everything."
+
+Renovales was irritated at her disposition, always restless and
+capricious as a bird's, quite as likely to sit down beside him in warm
+intimacy as to flit away with tormenting banter.
+
+Sometimes she was aggressive, teasing the artist from her very first
+words, as had just happened that afternoon.
+
+They were silent for a long time--he, painting with an absent-minded
+air, she watching the movement of the brush, buried in an armchair in
+the sweet calm of rest.
+
+But the Alberca woman was incapable of remaining silent long. Little by
+little her usual chatter began, paying no attention to the painter's
+silence, talking to relieve the convent-like stillness of the studio
+with her words and laughter.
+
+The painter heard the story of her labors as president of the "Women's
+League," of the great things she meant to do in the holy undertaking for
+the emancipation of the sex. And, in passing, led on by her desire of
+ridiculing all women, she gaily made sport of her co-workers in the
+great project; unknown literary women, school teachers, whose lives were
+embittered by their ugliness, painters of flowers and doves, a throng of
+poor women with extravagant hats and clothes that looked as though they
+were hung on a bean-pole; feminine Bohemians, rebellious and rabid
+against their lot, who were proud to have her as their leader and who
+made it a point to call her "Countess" in sonorous tones at every other
+word, in order to flatter themselves with the distinction of this
+friendship. The Alberca woman was greatly amused at her following of
+admirers; she laughed at their intolerance and their proposals.
+
+"Yes, I know what it is," said Renovales breaking his long silence. "You
+want to annihilate us, to reign over man, whom you hate."
+
+The countess laughed at the recollection of the fierce feminism of some
+of her acolytes. As most of them were homely, they hated feminine beauty
+as a sign of weakness. They wanted the woman of the future to be without
+hips, without breasts, straight, bony, muscular, fitted for all sorts of
+manual labor, free from the slavery of love and reproduction. "Down with
+feminine fat!"
+
+"What a frightful idea! Don't you think so, Mariano?" she continued.
+"Woman, straight in front and straight behind, with her hair cut short
+and her hands hardened, competing with men in all sorts of struggles!
+And they call that emancipation! I know what men are; if they saw us
+looking like that, in a few days they would be beating us."
+
+No, she was not one of them. She wanted to see a woman triumph, but by
+increasing still more her charm and her fascination. If they took away
+her beauty what would she have left? She wanted her to be man's equal in
+intelligence, his superior by the magic of her beauty.
+
+"I don't hate men, Mariano, I am very much a woman, and I like them.
+What's the use of denying it?"
+
+"I know it, Concha, I know it," said the painter, with a malicious
+meaning.
+
+"What do you know? Lies, gossip that people tell about me because I am
+not a hypocrite and am not always wearing a gloomy expression."
+
+And led on by that desire for sympathy that all women of questionable
+reputation experience, she spoke once more of her unpleasant situation.
+Renovales knew the count, a good man in spite of his hobbies, who
+thought of nothing but his honorary trinkets. She did everything for
+him, watched out for his comfort, but he was nothing to her. She lacked
+the most important thing--heart-love.
+
+As she spoke she looked up, with a longing idealism that would have made
+anyone but Renovales smile.
+
+"In this situation," she said slowly, looking into space, "it isn't
+strange that a woman seeks happiness where she can find it. But I am
+very unhappy, Mariano; I don't know what love is. I have never loved."
+
+Ah, she would have been happy, if she had married a man who was her
+superior. To be the companion of a great artist, of a scholar, would
+have meant happiness for her. The men who gathered around her in her
+drawing-rooms were younger and stronger than the poor count, but
+mentally they were even weaker than he. There was no such thing as
+virtue in the world, she admitted that; she did not dare to lie to a
+friend like the painter. She had had her diversions, her whims, just as
+many other women who passed as impregnable models of virtue, but she
+always came out of these misdoings with a feeling of disenchantment and
+disgust. She knew that love was a reality for other women, but she had
+never succeeded in finding it.
+
+Renovales had stopped painting. The sunlight no longer came in through
+the wide window. The panes took on a violet opaqueness. Twilight filled
+the studio, and in the shadows there shone dimly like dying sparks, here
+the corner of a picture frame, beyond the old gold of an embroidered
+banner, in the corners the pummel of a sword, the pearl inlay of a
+cabinet.
+
+The painter sat down beside the countess, sinking into the perfumed
+atmosphere which surrounded her with a sort of nimbus of keen
+voluptuousness.
+
+He, too, was unhappy. He said it sincerely, believing honestly in the
+lady's melancholy despair. Something was lacking in his life; he was
+alone in the world. And as he saw an expression of surprise on Concha's
+face, he pounded his chest energetically.
+
+Yes, alone. He knew what she was going to say. He had his wife, his
+daughter. About Milita he did not want to talk; he worshiped her; she
+was his joy. When he felt tired out with work, it gave him a sweet sense
+of rest to put his arms around her neck. But he was still too young to
+be satisfied with this joy of a father's love. He longed for something
+more and he could not find it in the companion of his life, always ill,
+with her nerves constantly on edge. Besides, she did not understand him.
+She never would understand him; she was a burden who was crushing his
+talent.
+
+Their union was based merely on friendship, on mutual consideration for
+the suffering they had undergone together. He, too, had been deceived in
+taking for love what was only an impulse of youthful attraction. He
+needed a true passion; to live close to a soul that was akin to his, to
+love a woman who was his superior, who could understand him and
+encourage him in his bold projects, who could sacrifice her commonplace
+prejudices to the demands of art.
+
+He spoke vehemently, with his eyes fixed on Concha's eyes that shone
+with light from the window.
+
+But Renovales was interrupted by a cruel, ironical laugh, while the
+countess pushed back her chair, as if to avoid the artist who slowly
+leaned forward toward her.
+
+"Look out, you're slipping, Mariano! I see it coming. A little more and
+you would have made me a confession. Heavens! These men! You can't talk
+to them like a good friend, show them any confidence without their
+beginning to talk love on the spot. If I would let you, in less than a
+minute you would tell me that I am your ideal, that you worship me."
+
+Renovales, who had moved away from her, recovering his sternness, felt
+cut by that mocking laugh and said in a quiet tone:
+
+"And what if it were true? What if I loved you?"
+
+The laugh of the countess rang out again, but forced, false, with a tone
+that seemed to tear the artist's breast.
+
+"Just what I expected! The confession I spoke of! That's the third one
+I've received to-day. But isn't it possible to talk with a man of
+anything but love?"
+
+She was already on her feet, looking around for her hat, for she could
+not remember where she had left it.
+
+"I'm going, _cher maitre_. It isn't safe to stay here. I'll try to come
+earlier next time so that the twilight won't catch us. It's a
+treacherous hour; the moment of the greatest follies."
+
+The painter objected to her leaving. Her carriage had not yet come. She
+could wait a few minutes longer. He promised to be quiet, not to talk to
+her, as long as it seemed to displease her.
+
+The countess remained, but she would not sit down in the chair. She
+walked around the studio for a few moments and finally opened the organ
+that stood near the window.
+
+"Let's have a little music; that will quiet us. You, Mariano, sit still
+as a mouse in your chair and don't come near me. Be a good boy now."
+
+Her fingers rested on the keys; her feet moved the pedals and the
+_Largo_ of Handel, grave, mystic, dreamy, swelled softly through the
+studio. The melody filled the wide room, already wrapped in shadows, it
+made its way through the tapestries, prolonging its winged whisper
+through the other two studios, as though it were the song of an organ
+played by invisible hands in a deserted cathedral at the mysterious hour
+of dusk.
+
+Concha felt stirred with feminine sentimentality, that superficial,
+whimsical, sensitiveness that made her friends look on her as a great
+artist. The music filled her with tenderness; she strove to keep back
+the tears that came to her eyes,--why, she could not tell.
+
+Suddenly she stopped playing and looked around anxiously. The painter
+was behind her, she fancied she felt his breath on her neck. She wanted
+to protest, to make him draw back with one of her cruel laughs, but she
+could not.
+
+"Mariano," she murmured, "go sit down, be a good boy and mind me. If you
+don't I'll be cross."
+
+But she did not move; after turning half way around on the stool, she
+remained facing the window with one elbow resting on the keys.
+
+They were silent for a long time; she in this position, he watching her
+face that now was only a white spot in the deepening shadow.
+
+The panes of the window took on a bluish opaqueness. The branches of the
+garden cut them like sinuous, shifting lines of ink. In the deep calm of
+the studio the creaking of the furniture could be heard, that breathing
+of wood, of dust, of objects in the silence and shadow.
+
+Both of them seem to be captivated by the mystery of the hour, as if the
+death of day acted as an anaesthetic on their minds. They felt lulled in
+a vague, sweet dream.
+
+She trembled with pleasure.
+
+"Mariano, go away," she said slowly, as if it cost her an effort. "This
+is so pleasant, I feel as if I were in a bath, a bath that penetrates to
+my very soul. But it isn't right. Turn on the lights, master. Light!
+Light! This isn't proper."
+
+Mariano did not listen to her. He had bent over her, taking her hand
+that was cold, unfeeling, as if it did not notice the pressure of his.
+
+Then, with a sudden start, he kissed it, almost bit it.
+
+The countess seemed to awake and stood up, proudly, angrily.
+
+"That's childish, Mariano. It isn't fair."
+
+But in a moment she laughed with her cruel laugh, as if she pitied the
+confusion that Renovales showed when he saw her anger. "You are
+pardoned, master. A kiss on the hand means nothing. It is the
+conventional thing. Many men kiss my hand."
+
+And this indifference was a bitter torment for the artist, who
+considered that his kiss was a sign of possession.
+
+The countess continued to search in the darkness, repeating in an
+irritated voice:
+
+"Light, turn on the light. Where in the world is the button?"
+
+The light was turned on without Mariano's moving, before she found the
+button she was looking for. Three clusters of electric lights flashed
+out on the ceiling of the studio, and their crowns of white needles,
+brought out of the shadows the golden picture frames, the brilliant
+tapestries, the shining arms, the showy furniture and the bright-colored
+paintings.
+
+They both blinked, blinded by the sudden brightness.
+
+"Good evening," said a honeyed voice from the doorway.
+
+"Josephina!"
+
+The countess ran toward her, embracing her effusively, kissing her
+bright red, emaciated cheeks.
+
+"How dark you were," continued Josephina with a smile that Renovales
+knew well.
+
+Concha fairly stunned her with her flow of chatter. The illustrious
+master had refused to light up, he liked the twilight. An artist's whim!
+They had been talking about their dear Josephina, while she was waiting
+for her carriage to come. And as she said this, she kept kissing the
+little woman, drawing back a little to look at her better, repeating
+impetuously:
+
+"My, how pretty you are to-day. You look better than you did three days
+ago."
+
+Josephina continued to smile. She thanked her. Her carriage was waiting
+at the door. The servant had told her when she came downstairs,
+attracted by the distant sound of the organ.
+
+The countess seemed to be in a hurry to leave. She suddenly remembered a
+host of things she had to do, she enumerated the people who were waiting
+for her at home. Josephina helped her to put on her hat and veil and
+even then the countess gave her several good-by kisses through the veil.
+
+"Good-by, _ma chere_. Good-by, _mignonne_. Do you remember our school
+days? How happy we were there! Good-by, _maitre_."
+
+She stopped at the door to kiss Josephina once more.
+
+And finally, before she disappeared, she exclaimed in the querulous tone
+of a victim who wants sympathy:
+
+"I envy you, _cherie_. You, at least, are happy. You have found a
+husband who worships you. Master, take lots of care of her. Be good to
+her so that she may get well and pretty. Take care of her or we shall
+quarrel."
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+Renovales had finished reading the evening papers in bed as was his
+custom, and before putting out the light he looked at his wife.
+
+She was awake. Above the fold of the sheet he saw her eyes, unusually
+wide open, fixed on him with a hostile stare, and the little tails of
+her hair, that stuck out under the lace of her night-cap straight and
+sedate.
+
+"Aren't you asleep?" the painter asked in an affectionate tone, in which
+there was some anxiety.
+
+"No."
+
+And after this hard monosyllable, she turned over in the bed with her
+back to him.
+
+Renovales remained in the darkness, with his eyes open, somewhat
+disturbed, almost afraid of that body, hidden under the same sheet,
+lying a short distance from him, which avoided touching him, shrinking
+with manifest repulsion.
+
+Poor little girl! Renovales' better nature felt tormented with a painful
+remorse. His conscience was a cruel beast that had awakened, angry and
+implacable, tearing him with scornful teeth. The events of the afternoon
+meant nothing, a moment of thoughtlessness, of weakness. Surely the
+countess would not remember it and he, for his part, was determined not
+to slip again.
+
+A pretty situation for a father of a family, for a man whose youth was
+past, compromising himself in a love affair, getting melancholy in the
+twilight, kissing a white hand like an enamored troubadour! Good God!
+How his friends would have laughed to see him in that posture! He must
+purge himself of that romanticism which sometimes mastered him. Every
+man must follow his fate, accepting life as he found it. He was born to
+be virtuous, he must put up with the relative peace of his domestic
+life, must accept its limited pleasures as a compensation for the
+suffering his wife's illness caused him. He would be content with the
+feasts of his thought, with the revels in beauty at the banquets served
+by his fancy. He would keep his flesh faithful though it amounted to
+perpetual privation. Poor Josephina! His remorse at a moment of weakness
+which he considered a crime, impelled him to draw closer to her, as if
+he sought in her warmth and contact a mute forgiveness.
+
+Her body, burning with a slow fever, drew away as it felt his touch, it
+shriveled like those timid molluscs that shrink and hide at the least
+touch. She was awake. He could not hear her breathing; she seemed dead
+in the profound darkness, but he fancied her with her eyes open, a scowl
+on her forehead and he felt the fear of a man who has a presentiment of
+danger in the mystery of the darkness.
+
+Renovales too remained motionless, taking care not to touch again that
+form which silently repelled him. The sincerity of his repentance
+brought him a sort of consolation. Never again would he forget his wife,
+his daughter, his respectability.
+
+He would give up forever the longings of youth, that recklessness, that
+thirst for enjoying all the pleasures of life. His lot was cast; he
+would continue to be what he always had been. He would paint portraits
+and everything that was given to him as a commission; he would please
+the public; he would make more money, he would adapt his art to meet his
+wife's jealous demands, that she might live in peace; he would scoff at
+that phantom of human ambition which men call glory. Glory! A lottery,
+where the only chance for a prize depended on the tastes of people still
+to be born! Who knew what the artistic inclinations of the future would
+be? Perhaps it would appreciate what he was now producing with such
+loathing; perhaps it would laugh scornfully at what he wanted to paint.
+The only thing of importance was to live in peace, as long as he could
+be surrounded by happiness. His daughter would marry. Perhaps her
+husband would be his favorite pupil, that Soldevilla, so polite, so
+courteous, who was mad over the mischievous Milita. If it was not he, it
+would be Lopez de Sosa, a crazy fellow, in love with his automobiles,
+who pleased Josephina more than the pupil because he had not committed
+the sin of showing talent and devoting himself to painting. He would
+have grandchildren, his beard would grow white, he would have the
+majesty of an Eternal Father and Josephina, cared for by him, restored
+to health by an atmosphere of affection, would grow old too, freed from
+her nervous troubles.
+
+The painter felt allured by this picture of patriarchal happiness. He
+would go out of the world without having tasted the best fruits which
+life offers, but still with the peace of a soul that does not know the
+great heat of passion.
+
+Lulled by these illusions, the artist was sinking into sleep. He saw in
+the darkness, the image of his calm old age, with rosy wrinkles and
+silvery hair, at his side a sprightly little old lady, healthy and
+attractive, with wavy hair, and around them a group of children, many
+children, some of them with their fingers in their noses, others rolling
+on their backs on the floor, like playful kittens, the older ones with
+pencils in their hands, making caricatures of the old couple and all
+shouting in a chorus of loving cries: "Grandpa, dear! Pretty grandma!"
+
+In his sleepy fancy, the picture grew indistinct and was blotted out. He
+no longer saw the figures, but the loving cry continued to sound in his
+ears, dying away in the distance.
+
+Then it began to increase again, drew slowly nearer, but it was a
+complaint, a howl like that of the victim that feels the sacrificer's
+knife at its throat.
+
+The artist, terrified by this moan, thought that some dark animal, some
+monster of the night was tossing beside him, brushing him with its
+tentacles, pushing him with the bony points of its joints.
+
+He awoke and with his brain still cloudy with sleep, the first sensation
+he experienced was a tremble of fear and surprise, reaching from his
+head to his feet. The invisible monster was beside him, dying, kicking
+violently, sticking him with its angular body. The howl tore the
+darkness like a death rattle.
+
+Renovales, aroused by his fear, awoke completely. That cry came from
+Josephina. His wife was tossing about in the bed, shrieking while she
+gasped for breath.
+
+The electric button snapped and the white, hard light of the lamp showed
+the little woman in the disorder of her nervous outbreak; her weak limbs
+painfully convulsed, her eyes, staring, dull with an uncanny vacancy;
+her mouth contracted, dripping with foam.
+
+The husband, dazed at this awakening, tried to take her in his arms, to
+hold her gently against him, as if his warmth might restore her calm.
+
+"Let me--alone," she cried brokenly. "Let go of me. I hate you!"
+
+And though she asked him to let go of her, she was the one who clung to
+him, digging her fingers into his throat, as if she wanted to strangle
+him. Renovates, insensible to this clutch which made little impression
+on his strong neck, murmured with sad kindness:
+
+"Squeeze! Don't be afraid of hurting me. Relieve your feelings!"
+
+Her hands, tired out with this useless pressure on that muscular flesh,
+relaxed their grasp with a sort of dejection. The outbreak lasted for
+some time, but tears came and she lay exhausted, inert, without any
+other signs of life than the heaving of her breast and a constant stream
+of tears.
+
+Renovales had jumped out of bed, moving about the room in his night
+clothing, searching on all sides, without knowing what he was looking
+for, murmuring loving words to calm his wife.
+
+She stopped crying, struggling to enunciate each syllable between her
+sobs. She spoke with her head buried in her arms. The painter stopped to
+listen to her, astounded at the coarse words that came from her lips, as
+if the grief that stirred her soul had set afloat all the shameful,
+filthy words she had heard in the streets that were hidden in the depth
+of her memory.
+
+"The ----!" (And here she uttered the classic word, naturally, as if she
+had spoken thus all her life.) "The shameless woman! The ----!"
+
+And she continued to volley a string of interjections which shocked her
+husband to hear them coming from those lips.
+
+"But whom are you talking about? Who is it?"
+
+She, as if she were only waiting for his question, sat up in bed, got
+onto her knees, looking at him fixedly, shaking her head on her delicate
+neck, so that the short, straight locks of hair whirled around it.
+
+"Whom do you suppose? The Alberca woman. That peacock! Look surprised!
+You don't know what I mean! Poor thing!"
+
+Renovales expected this, but when he heard it, he assumed an injured
+expression, fortified by his determination to reform and by the
+certainty that he was telling the truth. He raised his hand to his heart
+in a tragic attitude, throwing back his shock of hair, not noticing the
+absurdity of his appearance that was reflected in the bedroom mirror.
+
+"Josephina, I swear by all that I love most in the world that your
+suspicions are not true. I have had nothing to do with Concha. I swear
+it by our daughter!"
+
+The little woman became more irritated.
+
+"Don't swear, don't lie, don't name my daughter. You deceiver! You
+hypocrite! You are all alike!"
+
+Did he think she was a fool? She knew everything that was going on
+around her. He was a rake, a false husband, she had discovered it a few
+months after their marriage; a Bohemian without any other education than
+the low associations of his class. And the woman was as bad; the worst
+in Madrid. There was a reason why people laughed at the count
+everywhere. Mariano and Concha understood each other; birds of a
+feather; they made fun of her in her own house, in the dark of the
+studio.
+
+"She is your mistress," she said with cold anger. "Come now, admit it.
+Repeat all those shameless things about the rights of love and joy that
+you talk about to your friends in the studio, those infamous hypocrisies
+to justify your scorn for the family, for marriage, for everything. Have
+the courage of your convictions."
+
+But Renovales, overwhelmed by this fierce outpouring of words that fell
+on him like a rain of blows, could only repeat, with his hand on his
+heart and the expression of noble resignation of a man who suffers an
+injustice:
+
+"I am innocent. I swear it. Your suspicions are absolutely groundless."
+
+And walking around to the other side of the bed, he tried again to take
+Josephina in his arms, thinking he could calm her, now that she seemed
+less furious and that her angry words were broken by tears.
+
+It was a useless effort. The delicate form slipped out of his hands,
+repelling them with a feeling of horror and repugnance.
+
+"Let me alone. Don't touch me. I loathe you."
+
+Her husband was mistaken if he thought that she was Concha's enemy.
+Pshaw! She knew what women were. She even admitted (since he was so
+insistent in his protestations of innocence) that there was nothing
+between them. But if so, it was due solely to Concha--she had plenty of
+admirers and, besides, her old time friendship would impel her not to
+embitter Josephina's life. Concha was the one who had resisted and not
+he.
+
+"I know you. You know that I can guess your thoughts, that I read in
+your face. You are faithful because you are a coward, because you have
+lacked an opportunity. But your mind is loaded with foul ideas; I detest
+your spirit."
+
+And before he could protest, his wife attacked him; anew, pouring out in
+one breath all the observations she had made, weighing his words and
+deeds with the subtlety of a diseased imagination.
+
+She threw in his face the expression of rapture in his eyes when he saw
+beautiful women sit down before his easel to have their portraits
+painted; his praise of the throat of one, the shoulders of another; the
+almost religious unction with which he examined the photographs and
+engravings of naked beauties, painted by other artists whom he would
+like to imitate in his licentious impulses.
+
+"If I should leave you! If I should disappear! Your studio would be a
+brothel, no decent person could enter it; you would always have some
+woman stripped in there, painting some disgraceful picture of her."
+
+And in the tremble of her irritated voice there was revealed the anger,
+the bitter disappointment she had experienced in the constant contact
+with this cult of beauty, that paid no attention to her, who was aged
+before her time, sickly, with the ugliness of physical misery, whom each
+one of these enthusiastic homages wounded like a reproach, marking the
+abyss between her sad condition and the ideal that filled the mind of
+her husband.
+
+"Do you think I don't know what you are thinking about. I laugh at your
+fidelity. A lie! Hypocrisy! As you get older, a mad desire is mastering
+you. If you could, if you had the courage, you would run after these
+creatures of beautiful flesh that you praise so highly. You are
+commonplace. There's nothing in you but coarseness and materialism.
+Form! Flesh! And they call that artistic? I'd have done better to marry
+a shoemaker, one of those honest, simple men that takes his poor little
+wife to dinner in a restaurant on Sunday and worships her, not knowing
+any other."
+
+Renovales began to feel irritated at this attack that was no longer
+based on his actions but on his thoughts. That was worse than the
+Inquisition. She had spied on him constantly; always on the watch, she
+picked up his least words and expressions, she penetrated his thoughts,
+making his inclinations and enthusiasms a subject for jealousy.
+
+"Stop, Josephina. That's despicable. I won't be able to think, to
+produce. You spy on me and pursue me even in my art."
+
+She shrugged her shoulders scornfully. His art! She scoffed at it.
+
+And she began again to insult painting, repenting that she had joined
+her lot to an artist's. Men like him ought not to marry respectable
+women, what people call "homebodies." Their fate was to remain single or
+to join with unscrupulous women who were in love with their own form and
+were capable of exhibiting it in the street, taking pride in their
+nakedness.
+
+"I used to love you; did you know it?" she said coldly. "I used to love
+you, but I no longer love you. What's the use? I know that even if you
+swore to me on your knees, you would never be faithful to me. You might
+be tied to my apron strings but your thoughts would go wandering off to
+caress those beauties you worship. You've got a perfect harem in your
+head. I think I am living alone with you and when I look at you, the
+house is peopled with women that surround me, that fill everything and
+mock at me; all fair, like children of the devil all naked, like
+temptations. Let me alone, Mariano, don't come near me. I don't want to
+see you. Put out the light."
+
+And seeing that the artist did not obey her command, she pressed the
+button herself. The cracking of her bones could be heard as she wrapped
+herself up in the bed-clothes.
+
+Renovales was left in utter darkness, and feeling his way, he got into
+bed too. He no longer implored, he remained silent, angry. The tender
+compassion that made him put up with his wife's nervous attacks had
+disappeared. What more did she expect of him? How far was it going to
+go? He lived the life of a recluse, restraining his healthy passion,
+keeping a chaste fidelity out of habit and respect, seeking an outlet in
+the ardent vagaries of his fancy, and even that was a crime! With the
+acumen of a sick woman, she saw within him, divining his ideas,
+following their course, tearing off the veil behind which he concealed
+those feasts of fancy with which he passed his solitary hours. This
+persecution reached even his brain. He could not patiently endure the
+jealousy of that woman who was embittered by the loss of her youthful
+freshness.
+
+She began her weeping again in the darkness. She sobbed convulsively,
+tossing the clothes with the heaving of her breast.
+
+His anger made him insensible and hard.
+
+"Groan, you poor wretch," he thought with a sort of relish. "Weep till
+you ruin yourself. I won't be the one to say a word."
+
+Josephina, tired out by his silence, interjected words amid her sobs.
+People made fun of her. She was a constant laughing-stock. How his
+friends who hung on his words, and the ladies who visited him in his
+studio, laughed when they heard him enthusiastically praising beauty in
+the presence of his sickly, broken-down wife! What did she amount to in
+that house, that terrible pantheon, that home of sorrow? A poor
+housekeeper who watched out for the artist's comforts. And he thought
+that he was fulfilling his duty by not keeping a mistress, by staying at
+home, but still abusing her with his words that made her an object of
+derision. If her mother were only alive! If her brothers were not so
+selfish, wandering about the world from embassy to embassy, satisfied
+with life, paying no attention to her letters filled with complaints,
+thinking she was insane because she was not contented with a
+distinguished husband and with wealth!
+
+Renovales, in the darkness, lifted his hands to his forehead in despair,
+infuriated at the sing-song of her unjust words.
+
+"Her mother!" he thought. "It's lucky that intolerable old dame is under
+the sod forever. Her brothers! A crowd of rakes that are always asking
+me for something whenever they get a chance. Heavens! Give me the
+patience to stand this woman, the calm resignation to keep a cool head
+and not to forget that I am a man!"
+
+He scorned her mentally in order to maintain his indifference in this
+way. Bah! A woman! and a sick one! Every man carries his cross and his
+was Josephina.
+
+But she, as if she penetrated his thoughts, stopped crying and spoke to
+him slowly in a voice that shook with cruel irony.
+
+"You need not expect anything from the Alberca woman," she said suddenly
+with feminine incoherence. "I warn you that she has worshipers by the
+dozen, young and stylish, too, something that counts more with women
+than talent."
+
+"What difference does that make to me?" Renovales' voice roared in the
+darkness with an outbreak of wrath.
+
+"I'm telling you, so that you won't fool yourself. Master, you are going
+to suffer a failure. You are very old, my good man, the years are going
+by. So old and so ugly that if you had looked the way you do when I met
+you, I should never have been your wife in spite of all your glory."
+
+After this thrust, satisfied and calm, she seemed to go to sleep.
+
+The master remained motionless, lying on his back with his head resting
+on his arms and his eyes wide open, seeing in the darkness a host of red
+spots that spread out in ceaseless rotation, forming floating, fiery
+rings. His wrath had set his nerves on edge; the final thrust made sleep
+impossible. He felt restless, wide-awake after this cruel shock to his
+pride. He thought that in his bed, close to him, he had his worst enemy.
+He hated that frail form that he could touch with the slightest
+movement, as if it contained the rancor of all the adversaries he had
+met in life.
+
+Old! Contemptible! Inferior to those young bloods that swarmed around
+the Alberca woman; he, a man known all over Europe, and in whose
+presence all the young ladies that painted fans and water-colors of
+birds and flowers, grew pale with emotion, looking at him with
+worshiping eyes!
+
+"I will soon show you, you poor woman," he thought, while a cruel laugh
+shook silently in the darkness. "You'll soon see whether glory means
+anything and people find me as old as you believe."
+
+With boyish joy, he recalled the twilight scene, the kiss on the
+countess's hand, her gentle abandon, that mingling of resistance and
+pleasure which opened the way for him to go farther. He enjoyed these
+memories with a relish of vengeance.
+
+Afterwards, his body, as he moved, touched Josephina, who seemed to be
+asleep, and he felt a sort of repugnance as if he had rubbed against a
+hostile creature.
+
+She was his enemy; she had distorted and ruined his life as an artist,
+she had saddened his life as a man. Now he believed that he might have
+produced the most remarkable works, if he had not known that little
+woman who crushed him with her weight. Her silent censure, her prying
+eyes, that narrow, petty morality of a well-educated girl, blocked his
+course and made him turn out of his way. Her fits of temper, her nervous
+attacks, made him lose his bearings, belittling him, robbing him of his
+strength for work. Must he always live like this? The thought of the
+long years before him filled him with horror, the long road that life
+offered him, monotonous, dusty, rough, without a shadow or a resting
+place, a painful journey lacking enthusiasm and ardor, pulling at the
+chain of duty, at the end of which dragged the enemy, always fretful,
+always unjust, with the selfish cruelty of disease, spying on him with
+searching eyes in the hours when his mind was off its guard, while he
+slept, violating his secrecy, forcing his immobility, robbing him of his
+most intimate ideas, only to parade them before his eyes later with the
+insolence of a successful thief. And that was what his life was to be!
+God! No, it was better to die.
+
+Then in the black recesses of his brain there rose, like a blue spark of
+infernal gleam, a thought, a desire, that made a chill of terror and
+surprise run over his body.
+
+"If she would only die!"
+
+Why not? Always ill, always sad, she seemed to darken his mind with the
+wings that beat ominously. He had a right to liberty, to break the
+chain, because he was the stronger. He had spent his life in the
+struggle for glory, and glory was a delusion, if it brought only cold
+respect from his fellows, if it could not be exchanged for something
+more positive. Many years of intense existence were left; he could still
+exult in a host of pleasures, he could still live, like some artists
+whom he admired, intoxicated with worldly joys, working in mad freedom.
+
+"Oh, if she would only die!"
+
+He recalled books he had read, in which other imaginary people had
+desired another's death that they might be able to satisfy more fully
+their appetites and passions.
+
+Suddenly he felt as though he were awakening from a bad dream, as though
+he were throwing off an overwhelming nightmare. Poor Josephina! His
+thought filled him with horror, he felt the infernal desire burning his
+conscience, like a hot iron that throws off a shower of sparks when
+touched. It was not tenderness that made him turn again towards his
+companion; not that; his old animosity remained. But he thought of her
+years of sacrifice, of the privations she had suffered, following him in
+the struggle with misery, without a complaint, without a protest, in the
+pains of motherhood, in the nursing of her daughter, that Milita who
+seemed to have stolen all the strength of her body and perhaps was the
+cause of her decline. How terrible to wish for her death! He hoped that
+she would live. He would bear everything with the patience of duty. She
+die? Never, he would rather die himself.
+
+But in vain did he struggle to forget the thought. The atrocious,
+monstrous desire, once awakened, resisted, refused to recede, to hide,
+to die in the windings of his brain whence it had arisen. In vain did he
+repent his villainy, or feel ashamed of his cruel idea, striving to
+crush it forever. It seemed as though a second personality had arisen
+within him, rebellious to his commands, opposed to his conscience, hard
+and indifferent to his sympathetic scruples, and this personality, this
+power, continued to sing in his ear with a merry accent, as if it
+promised him all the pleasures of life.
+
+"If she would only die! Eh, master? If she would only die!"
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+At the coming of spring Lopez de Sosa, "the intrepid sportsman," as
+Cotoner called him, appeared at Renovales' house every afternoon.
+
+Outside the entrance gate stood his eighty-horsepower automobile, his
+latest acquisition, of which he was intensely proud, a huge green car,
+that started and backed under the hand of the chauffeur while its owner
+was crossing the garden of the painter's house.
+
+Renovales saw him enter the studio, in a blue suit with a shining visor
+over his eyes, affecting the resolute bearing of a sailor or an
+explorer.
+
+"Good afternoon, Don Mariano, I have come for the ladies."
+
+And Milita came down stairs in a long gray coat, with a white cap,
+around which she wound a long blue veil. After her came her mother clad
+in the same fashion, small and insignificant beside the girl, who seemed
+to overwhelm her with her health and grace.
+
+Renovales approved of these trips. Josephina's legs were troubling her;
+a sudden weakness sometimes kept her in her chair for days at a time.
+Finding any sort of movement difficult, she liked to ride motionless in
+that car that fairly ate up space, reaching distant suburbs of Madrid
+without the least effort, as if she had not moved from the house.
+
+"Have a good time," said the painter with a sort of joy at the prospect
+of being left alone, completely alone, without the disturbance of
+feeling his wife's hostility near him. "I entrust them to you,
+Rafaelito; be careful, now."
+
+And Rafaelito assumed an expression of protest, as if he were shocked
+that anyone could doubt his skill. There was no danger with him.
+
+"Aren't you coming, Don Mariano? Lay down your brushes for a while.
+We're only going to the Pardo."
+
+The painter declined; he had a great deal to do. He knew what it was,
+and he did not like to go so fast. There was no pleasure in swallowing
+space with your eyes almost closed, unable to see anything but a hazy
+blur of the scenery, amid clouds of dust and crushed stone. He preferred
+to look at the landscape calmly, without haste, with the reflective
+quiet of the student. Besides he was out of place in things that did not
+belong to his time; he was getting old and these frightful novelties did
+not agree with him.
+
+"Good-by, papa."
+
+Milita, lifting her veil, put out her red, tempting lips, showing her
+bright teeth as she smiled. After this kiss came the other, formal and
+cold, exchanged with the indifference of habit, without any novelty
+except that Josephina's mouth drew back from his, as if she wanted to
+avoid any contact with him.
+
+They went out, the mother leaning on Rafaelito's arm with a sort of
+languor, as if she could hardly drag her weak body,--her pale face
+unrelieved by the least sign of blood.
+
+When Renovales found himself alone in the studio he would feel as happy
+as a school-boy on a holiday. He worked with a lighter touch, he roared
+out old songs, delighting to listen to the echoes that his voice
+awakened in the high-studded rooms. Often when Cotoner came in, he would
+surprise him by the serene shamelessness with which he sang some one of
+the licentious songs he had learned in Rome, and the painter of the
+Popes, smiling like a faun, joined in the chorus, applauding at the end
+these ribald verses of the studio.
+
+Tekli, the Hungarian, who sometimes spent an afternoon with him, had
+departed for his native land with his copy of _Las Meninas_, but not
+before lifting Renovales' hands several times to his heart, with
+extravagant terms of affection and calling him "noble master." The
+portrait of the Countess of Alberca was no longer in the studio; in a
+glittering frame it hung on the walls of the illustrious lady's
+drawing-room, where it received the worship of her admirers.
+
+Sometimes of an afternoon when the ladies had left the studio and the
+dull mumble of the car and the tooting of the horn had died away, the
+master and his friend would talk of Lopez de Sosa. A good fellow,
+somewhat foolish, but well-meaning; this was the judgment of Renovales
+and his old friend. He was proud of his mustache that gave him a certain
+likeness to the German emperor, and when he sat down, he took care to
+show his hands, by placing them prominently on his knees, in order that
+everyone might appreciate their vigorous hugeness, the prominent veins,
+and the strong fingers, all this with the naive satisfaction of a
+ditch-digger. His conversation always turned on feats of strength and
+before the two artists he strutted as if he belonged to another race,
+talking of his prowess as a fencer, of his triumphs in the bouts, of the
+weights he could lift with the slightest effort, of the number of chairs
+he could jump over without touching one of them. Often he interrupted
+the two painters when they were eulogizing the great masters of art, to
+tell them of the latest victory of some celebrated driver in the contest
+for a coveted cup. He knew by heart the names of all the European
+champions who had won the immortal laurel, in running, jumping, killing
+pigeons, boxing or fencing.
+
+Renovales had seen him come into the studio one afternoon, trembling
+with excitement, his eyes flashing, and showing a telegram.
+
+"Don Mariano, I have a Mercedes; they have just announced its shipment."
+
+The painter looked blank. Who was that personage with the woman's name?
+And Rafaelito smiled with pity.
+
+"The best make, a Mercedes, better than a Panhard; everyone knows that.
+Made in Germany; sixty thousand francs. There isn't another one in
+Madrid."
+
+"Well, congratulations."
+
+And the artist shrugged his shoulders and went on painting.
+
+Lopez de Sosa was wealthy. His father, a former manufacturer of canned
+goods, had left him a fortune that he administered prudently, never
+gambling, nor keeping mistresses (he had no time for such follies) but
+finding all his amusement in sports that strengthen the body. He had a
+coach-house of his own, where he kept his carriages and his automobiles
+which he showed to his friends with the satisfaction of an artist. It
+was his museum. Besides, he owned several teams of horses, for modern
+fads did not make him forget his former tastes, and he took as much
+pride in his past glories as a horseman as he did in his skill as a
+driver of cars. At rare intervals, on the days of an important
+bull-fight or when some sensational races were being run in the
+Hippodrome, he won a triumph on the box by driving six cabs, covered
+with tassels and bells, that seemed to proclaim the glory and wealth of
+their owner with their noisy course.
+
+He was proud of his virtuous life; free from foolishness or petty love
+affairs, wholly devoted to sports and show. His income was less than his
+expenses. The numerous personnel of his stable-garage, his horses,
+gasoline and tailors' bills ate up even a part of the principal. But
+Lopez de Sosa was undisturbed in this ruinous course,--for he was
+conscious of the danger, in spite of his extravagance. It was a mere
+youthful folly, he would cut down his expenses when he married. He
+devoted his evenings to reading, for he could not sleep quietly, unless
+he went through his classics (sporting-papers, automobile catalogs,
+etc.), and every month he made new acquisitions abroad, spending
+thousands of francs and, complaining, like a serious business man, of
+the rise in the Exchange, of the exorbitant customs charges, of the
+stupidity of the Government that so shackled the development of the
+country. The price of every automobile was greatly increased on crossing
+the frontier. And after that, politicians expected progress and
+regeneration!
+
+He had been educated by the Jesuits at the University of Deusto and had
+his degree in law. But that had not made him over-pious. He was liberal,
+he lived the modern spirit; he had no use for fanaticism nor hypocrisy.
+He had said good-by to the good Fathers as soon as his own father, who
+was a great admirer of them, had died. But he still preserved a certain
+respect for them because they had been his teachers and he knew that
+they were great scholars. But modern life was different. He read with
+perfect freedom, he read a great deal; he had in his house a library
+composed of at least a hundred French novels. He purchased all the
+volumes that came from Paris with a woman's picture on the cover and in
+which, under pretext of describing Greek, Roman, or Egyptian customs,
+the author placed a large number of youths and maidens without any
+other decorations of civilization than the fillets and the caps that
+covered their heads.
+
+He insisted on freedom, perfect freedom, but for him, men were divided
+into two castes, decent people and those who were not. Among the first
+figured en masse all the young fellows of the Gran Pena, the old men of
+the Casino, together with some people whose names appeared in the
+papers, a certain evidence of their merit. The rest was the rabble,
+despicable and vulgar in the streets of the cities, repulsive and
+displeasing on the road, whom he insulted with all of the coarseness of
+ill-breeding and threatened to kill when a child ran in front of his car
+with the vicious purpose of letting itself be crushed under the wheels,
+to stir up trouble with a decent person, or when some workingman,
+pretending he could not hear the warnings of his horn, would not get out
+of the way and was run over--as if a man who makes two pesetas a day
+were superior to machines that cost thousands of francs! What could you
+do with such ignorant, commonplace people! And some wretches were still
+talking about the rights of man and revolutions!
+
+Cotoner, who expended incredible care in keeping his single suit
+presentable for calls and dinners, questioned Lopez de Sosa with
+astonishment in regard to the progress of his wardrobe.
+
+"How many ties have you now, Rafael?"
+
+"About seven hundred." He had counted them recently. And ashamed that he
+did not yet own the longed-for thousand, he spoke of fitting himself out
+on his next trip to London when the principal British automobilists were
+to contend for the cup. He received his boots from Paris, but they were
+made by a Swiss boot-maker, the same one who provided the foot-gear of
+Edward of England; he counted his trousers by the dozen, and never wore
+one pair more than eight or ten times; his linen was given to his valet
+almost before it was used, his hats all came from London. He had eight
+frock-coats made every year, that often grew old without ever being
+worn, of different colors to suit the circumstances and the hours when
+he must wear them. One in particular, dead black with long skirts,
+gloomy and austere, copied from the foreign illustrations that
+represented duels, was his uniform on solemn occasions, which he wore
+when some friend looked him up at the Pena, to get his assistance in
+representing him with his customary skill in affairs of honor.
+
+His tailor admired his talent, his masterly command in choosing cloth
+and deciding on the cut among the countless designs. Result, he spent
+something like five thousand dollars a year on his clothes, and said
+ingenuously to the two artists,
+
+"How much less can a decent person spend if he wants to be presentable?"
+
+Lopez de Sosa visited Renovales' house as a friend after the latter had
+painted his portrait. In spite of his automobiles, his clothes, and the
+fact that he chose his associates among people who bore noble titles, he
+could not succeed in getting a foothold in society. He knew that behind
+his back people nicknamed him, "Pickled Herring," alluding to his
+father's trade, and that the young ladies, who counted him as a friend,
+rebelled at the idea of marrying the "Canned-goods Boy," which was
+another of his names. The friendship of Renovales was a source of pride.
+
+He had requested him to make his portrait, paying him without haggling,
+in order that he might appear at the Exhibition, quite as good a way as
+any other of introducing his insignificance among the famous men who
+were painted by the artist. After that he was on intimate terms with the
+master, talking everywhere about "his friend, Renovales!" with a sort of
+familiarity, as if he were a comrade who could not live without him.
+This raised him greatly in the estimation of his acquaintances. Besides,
+he had felt a real admiration for the master ever since one afternoon
+when tired out with the account of his prowess as a fencer, Renovales
+had laid aside his brushes and taking down two old foils, had had
+several bouts with him. What a man he was! And how he remembered the
+points he had learned in Rome!
+
+In his frequent visits to the artist's house, he finally felt attracted
+toward Milita; he saw in her the woman he wanted to marry. Lacking more
+sonorous titles, it was something to be the son-in-law of Renovales.
+Besides, the painter enjoyed the reputation of being wealthy, he spoke
+of his enormous profits, and he still had many years before him, to add
+to his fortune, all of which would be his daughter's.
+
+Lopez de Sosa began to pay court to Milita, calling on his great
+resources, appearing every day in a different suit, coming every
+afternoon, sometimes in a carriage drawn by a dashing pair, sometimes in
+one of his cars. The fashionable youth won the favor of her mother,--an
+important part. This was the kind of a husband for her daughter. No
+painter! And in vain did Soldevilla put on his brightest ties and show
+off shocking waistcoats; his rival crushed him and, what was worse, the
+master's wife, who formerly used to have a sort of motherly concern for
+him and called him by his first name, for she had known him as a boy,
+now received him coldly, as if she wished to discourage his suit for
+Milita.
+
+The girl fluctuated between her two admirers with a mocking smile. One
+seemed to interest her as much as the other. She drove the painter, the
+companion of her childhood, to despair, at times abusing him with her
+jests, at others attracting him with her effusive intimacy, as in the
+days when they played together; and at the same time she praised Lopez
+de Sosa's stylishness, laughed with him, and Soldevilla even suspected
+that they wrote letters to each other as if they were engaged.
+
+Renovales rejoiced at the cleverness with which his daughter kept the
+two young men uncertain and eager about her. She was a terror, a boy in
+skirts, more manly than either of her worshipers.
+
+"I know her, Pepe," he said to Cotoner. "We must let her do what she
+wants to. The day she decides in favor of one or the other we'll have to
+marry her at once. She isn't one of the girls to wait. If we don't marry
+her soon and to her taste, she's likely to elope with her fiance."
+
+The father excused Milita's impatience. Poor girl! Think what she saw in
+her home! Her mother always ill, terrifying her with her tears, her
+cries and her nervous attacks; her father working in his studio, and her
+only companion the unsympathetic "Miss." He owed his thanks to Lopez de
+Sosa for taking them outdoors on these dizzy rides from which Josephina
+returned greatly quieted.
+
+Renovales preferred his pupil. He was almost his son, he had fought many
+a hard battle to give him fellowships and prizes. He was a trifle
+displeased at some of his slight infidelities, for as soon as he had won
+some renown, he bragged about his independence, praising everything that
+the master thought condemnable behind his back. But even so, the idea of
+his marrying his daughter pleased him; a painter as a son-in-law; his
+grandchildren painters, the blood of Renovales perpetuated in a dynasty
+of artists who would fill history with their glory.
+
+"But, oh, Pepe! I'm afraid the girl will choose the other. After all,
+she's a woman. And women appreciate only what they see, gallantry and
+youth."
+
+And the master's words betrayed a certain bitterness, as though he were
+thinking of something very different from what he was saying.
+
+Then he began to discuss the merits of Lopez de Sosa, as if he were
+already a member of the family.
+
+"A good boy, isn't he, Pepe? A little stupid for us, unable to talk for
+ten minutes without making us yawn, a fine fellow, but not our kind."
+
+There was scorn in Renovales' voice as he spoke of the vigorous healthy
+young men of the present, with their brains absolutely free from
+culture, who had just assaulted life, invading every phase of it. What
+people! Gymnastics, fencing, kicking a huge bull, swinging a mallet on
+horseback, wild flights in an automobile; from the royal family down to
+the last middle-class scion everyone rushed into this life of childish
+joy, as if a man's mission consisted merely in hardening his muscles,
+sweating and delighting in the shifting chances of a game. Activity fled
+from the brain to the extremities of the body. They were strong, but
+their minds lay fallow, wrapped in a haze of childish credulity. Modern
+men seemed to stop growing at the age of fourteen; they never went
+beyond, content with the joys of movement and strength. Many of these
+big fellows were ignorant of women, or almost so, at the age when in
+other times they were turning back, satiated with love. Busy running
+without direction or end, they had no time nor quiet to think about
+women. Love was about to go on a strike, unable to resist the
+competition of sports. The young men lived by themselves, finding in
+athletic exercise a satisfaction that left them without any desire or
+curiosity for the other pleasures of life. They were big boys with
+strong fists; they could fight with a bull and yet the approach of a
+woman filled them with terror. All the sap of their life was used up in
+violent exercise. Intelligence seemed to have concentrated in their
+hands, leaving their heads empty. What was going to become of this new
+people? Perhaps it would form a healthier, stronger human race, but
+without love or passion, without any other association than the blind
+impulse of reproduction.
+
+"We are a different sort, eh, Pepe?" said Renovales with a sly wink.
+"When we were boys we didn't care for our bodies so well, but we had
+better times. We weren't so pure, but we were interested in something
+higher than automobiles and prize cups; we had ideals."
+
+Then he began to talk again of the young man who expected to become one
+of his family and made sport of his mentality.
+
+"If Milita decides on him, I won't object. The important thing in such
+matters is that they should be congenial to each other. He's a good boy;
+I could almost give him my blessing. But I suspect that when the
+sensation of novelty has worn off, he will go back to his fads and poor
+Milita will be jealous of those machines that are eating up the greater
+part of his fortune."
+
+Sometimes, before the light died out in the afternoon, Renovales excused
+his model, if he had one, and laying aside his brushes went out of the
+studio. When he came back, he would have on his coat and hat.
+
+"Pepe, let's take a walk."
+
+Cotoner knew where this walk would land them.
+
+They followed the iron fence of the Retiro and went down the Calle de
+Alcala, walking slowly among the groups of strollers, some of whom
+turned round behind them to point out the master. "That taller one is
+Renovales, the painter." In a few minutes, Mariano hastened his step
+with nervous impatience, he stopped talking and Cotoner followed him
+with an ill-humored expression, humming between his teeth. When they
+reached the Cibeles, the old painter knew that their walk was nearly
+over.
+
+"I'll see you to-morrow, Pepe, I'm going this way. I've got to see the
+countess."
+
+One day, he did not limit himself to this brief leave-taking. After he
+had gone a few steps, he came back toward his companion and said
+hesitatingly:
+
+"Listen, if Josephina asks you where I went, don't say anything. I know
+that you are prudent but she is always worried. I tell you this so as to
+avoid any trouble. The two women don't get along together very well.
+Some woman's quarrel!"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+At the opening of spring, when Madrid was beginning to think good
+weather had really come, and people were impatiently getting out their
+summer clothes, there was an unexpected and treacherous return of winter
+that clouded the sky and covered with a coat of snow the muddy ground
+and the gardens where the first flowers of spring were beginning to
+sprout.
+
+There was a fire once more in the fireplace in the drawing-room of the
+Countess of Alberca, where all the gentlemen who formed her coterie
+gathered to keep warm on days when she was "at home," not having a
+meeting to preside over or calls to make.
+
+When Renovales came one afternoon, he spoke enthusiastically of the view
+of Moncloa, covered with snow. He had just been there, a beautiful
+sight, the woods, buried in wintry silence, surprised by the white
+shroud when they were beginning to crack with the swelling of the sap.
+It was a pity that the camera craze filled the woods with so many people
+who went back and forth with their outfits, sullying the purity of the
+snow.
+
+The countess was as interested as a child. She wanted to see that, she
+would go the next day. Her friends tried in vain to dissuade her,
+telling her the weather would probably change presently. To-morrow the
+sun would come out, the snow would melt; these unexpected storms were
+characteristic of the fickle climate of Madrid.
+
+"It makes no difference," said Concha obstinately, "I've got the idea
+into my head. It's years since I have seen it. My life is such a busy
+one."
+
+She would go to see the thaw in the morning; no, not in the morning. She
+got up late and had to receive all those Women's Rights ladies that came
+to consult her. In the afternoon, she would go after luncheon. It was
+too bad that Renovales worked at that time and could not go with her. He
+could appreciate landscapes so well with his artist's eyes and had often
+spoken to her of the sunset from the palace of Moncloa, a sight almost
+equal to the one you can see in Rome from the Pinzio at dusk. The
+painter smiled gallantly. He would try to be at Moncloa the next day;
+they would meet.
+
+The countess seemed to take sudden fright at this promise and glanced at
+Doctor Monteverde. But she was disappointed in her hope of being
+censured for her fickleness and unfaithfulness, for the doctor remained
+indifferent.
+
+Lucky doctor! How Renovales hated him. He was a young man, as fair and
+as fragile as a porcelain figure, a combination of such striking
+beauties that his face was almost a caricature. His hair, parted in two
+waves over his pale forehead, was black, very black and shining with
+bluish reflections, his eyes, as soft as velvet, showed the read spot of
+the lachrymal on the polished ivory of the cornea, veritable odalisque
+eyes, his bright red lips showed under his bristly mustache, his
+complexion was as pale as a camellia, and his teeth flashed like pearl.
+Concha looked at him with ecstatic devotion, talked with her eyes on
+him, consulting him with her glance, lamenting inwardly his lack of
+mastery, eager to be his slave, to be corrected by him in all the
+caprices of her giddy character.
+
+Renovales scorned him, questioning his manhood, making the most
+atrocious comments on him in his rough fashion.
+
+He was a doctor of science and was waiting for a chair at Madrid to be
+declared vacant, that he might become a candidate for it. The Countess
+of Alberca had him under her high protection, talking about him
+enthusiastically to all the important gentlemen who exercised any
+influence in University circles. She would break out into the most
+extravagant praise of the doctor in Renovales' presence. He was a
+scholar and what made her admire him was the fact that all his learning
+did not keep him from dressing well and being as fair as an angel.
+
+"For pretty teeth, look at Monteverde's," she would say, looking at him
+in the crowded room, through her lorgnette.
+
+At other times, following the course of her ideas, she would interrupt
+the conversation, without noticing the irrelevancy of her words.
+
+"But did you notice the doctor's hands? They're more delicate than mine!
+They look like a woman's hands."
+
+The painter was indignant at these demonstrations of Concha's that often
+occurred in her husband's presence.
+
+The calm of that honorable gentleman astounded him. Was the man blind?
+And the count with fatherly good humor always said the same thing.
+
+"That Concha! Did you ever hear such frankness! Don't mind her,
+Monteverde, it's my wife's way, childishness."
+
+The doctor would smile, flattered at the atmosphere of worship with
+which the countess surrounded him.
+
+He had written a book on the natural origin of animal organism, of which
+the fair countess spoke enthusiastically. The painter observed this
+change in her tastes with surprise and envy. No more music, nor verses,
+nor plastic arts which had formerly occupied her flighty attention, that
+was attracted by everything that shines or makes a noise. Now she looked
+on the arts as pretty, insignificant toys that were fit to amuse only
+the childhood of the human race. Times were changing, people must be
+serious. Science, nothing but science; she was the protectress, the good
+friend, the adviser of a scholar. And Renovales found famous books on
+the tables and chairs, feverishly run through and laid aside because she
+grew tired of them or could not understand them after the first impulse
+of curiosity.
+
+Her coterie, almost wholly composed of old gentlemen attracted by the
+beauty of the countess, and in love with her though without hope, smiled
+to hear her talking so weightily about science. Men who were prominent
+in politics admired her frankly. How many things that woman knew! Many
+that they did not know themselves. The others, well-known physicians,
+professors, lawyers, who had not studied anything for years, approved
+complacently. For a woman it was not at all bad. And she, lifting her
+glasses to her eyes from time to time to relish the doctor's beauty,
+talked with a pedantic slowness about protoplasms, and the reproduction
+of the cells, the cannibalisms of the phagocytes, catarine, anthropoid
+and pithecoid apes, discoplacentary mammals and the Pithecanthropos,
+treating the mysteries of life with friendly confidence, repeating
+strange scientific words, as if they were the names of society folks,
+who had dined with her the evening before.
+
+The handsome Doctor Monteverde, according to her, was head and shoulders
+above all the scholars of universal reputation.
+
+Their books made her tired, she could not make anything out of them, in
+spite of the fact that the doctor admired them greatly. To make up for
+this, she had read Monteverde's book over and over, and she recommended
+this wonderful work to her lady friends, who in matters of reading never
+went beyond the novels in popular magazines.
+
+"He is a scholar," said the countess one afternoon while talking alone
+with Renovales. "He's just beginning now, but I will push him ahead and
+he will turn out to be a genius. He has extraordinary talent. I wish you
+had read his book. Are you acquainted with Darwin? You aren't, are you?
+Well, he is greater than Darwin, much greater."
+
+"I can believe that," said the painter. "Your Monteverde is as pretty as
+a baby and Darwin was an ugly old fellow."
+
+The countess hesitated whether to get serious or to laugh, and finally
+she shook her lorgnette at him.
+
+"Keep still, you horrid man. After all, you're a painter. You can't
+understand tender friendships, pure relations, fraternity based on
+study."
+
+How bitterly the painter laughed at this purity and fraternity! His eyes
+were good and Concha, for her part, was no model of prudence in hiding
+her feelings. Monteverde was her lover, just as formerly a musician had
+been, at a period when the countess talked of nothing but Beethoven and
+Wagner, as if they were callers, and long before that a pretty little
+duke, who gave private amateur bull-fights at which he slaughtered the
+innocent oxen after greeting lovingly the Alberca woman, who, wrapped in
+a white mantilla, and decorated with pinks, leaned out of the box in the
+grandstand. Her relations with the doctor were almost common talk. That
+was amply proved by the fury with which the gentlemen of her coterie
+pulled him to pieces, declaring that he was an idiot and that his book
+was a Harlequin's coat, a series of excerpts from other men, poorly
+basted together, with the daring of ignorance. They, too, were stung by
+envy, in their senile, silent love, by the triumph of that stripling who
+carried off their idol, whom they had worshiped with a contemplative
+devotion that gave new life to their old age.
+
+Renovales was angry with himself. He tried in vain to overcome the habit
+that made him turn his steps every afternoon toward the countess's
+house.
+
+"I'll never go there again," he would say when he was back in his
+studio. "A pretty part you're playing, Mariano! Acting as a chorus to a
+love duet, in the company of all these senile imbeciles. A fine aim in
+life, this countess of yours!"
+
+But the next day he would go back, thinking with a sort of hope of
+Monteverde's pretentious superiority, and the disdainful air with which
+he received his fair adorer's worship. Concha would soon get tired of
+this mustached doll and turn her eyes on him, a man.
+
+The painter observed the transformation of his nature. He was a
+different man, and he made every effort to keep his family from noticing
+this change. He recognized mentally that he was in love, with the
+satisfaction of a mature man who sees in this a sign of youth the
+budding of a second life. He had felt impelled toward Concha by the
+desire of breaking the monotony of his existence, of imitating other
+men, of tasting the acidity of infidelity, in a brief escape from the
+stern imposing walls that shut in the desert of married life which was
+every day covered with more brambles and tares. Her resistance
+exasperated him, increasing his desire. He was not exactly sure how he
+felt; perhaps it was merely a physical attraction and added to that the
+wound to his pride, the bitterness of being repelled when he came down
+from the heights of virtue, where he had held his position with savage
+pride, believing that all the joys of the earth were waiting for him,
+dazzled by his glory and that he had only to hold out his arms and they
+would run to him.
+
+He felt humiliated by his failure; a dumb rage filled him when he
+compared his gray hair and his eyes, surrounded by growing wrinkles,
+with that pretty boy of science who seemed to drive the countess insane.
+Women! Their intellectual interest, their exaggerated admiration of
+fame! A lie! They worshiped talent only when it was well presented in a
+young and beautiful covering.
+
+Impelled by his obstinacy, Renovales was determined to overcome the
+resistance. He recalled, without the least remorse, the scene with his
+wife in the bedroom, and her scornful words that foretold his failure
+with the countess. Josephina's disdain was only another spur to urge him
+to continue his course.
+
+Concha kept him off and led him on at the same time. There was no doubt
+that the master's love flattered her vanity. She laughed at his
+passionate protestations, taking them in jest, always answering them in
+the same tone: "Be dignified, master. That isn't becoming to you. You
+are a great man, a genius. Let the boys be the ones to play the part of
+the lovesick student." But when enraged at her subtle mockery, he took a
+mental oath not to come back again, she seemed to guess it and she
+suddenly assumed an affectionate air, attracting him with an interest
+that made him foresee the near approach of his triumph.
+
+If he was offended and kept silence, she was the one who talked of love,
+of eternal passions between two beings of lofty minds, based on the
+harmony of their thoughts; and she did not cease this dangerous
+conversation until the master, with a sudden renewal of confidence,
+came forward offering his love, only to be received with that kindly and
+still ironical smile that seemed to look on him as a child whose
+judgment was faulty.
+
+And so the master lived, fluctuating between hope and despair, now
+favored, now repelled, but always incapable of escaping from her
+influence, as if a crime were haunting him. He sought opportunities to
+see her alone with the ingenuity of a college boy, he invented pretexts
+for going to her house at unusual hours, when there were no callers
+present, and his courage failed him when he ran into the pretty doctor
+and felt around himself that sensation of uneasiness which always seizes
+an unwelcome guest.
+
+The vague hope of meeting the countess at Moncloa, of walking with her a
+whole afternoon, unmolested by that circle of insufferable people who
+surrounded her with their drooling worship, kept him excited all night
+and the next morning, as if a real rendezvous were awaiting him. Would
+she go? Was not her promise a mere whim that she had immediately
+forgotten? He sent a note to an ex-minister of State, whose portrait he
+was painting, to ask him not to come to the studio that afternoon, and
+after luncheon he got into a cab, telling the cabby to beat the horse,
+to go full speed, for fear of being late.
+
+He knew that it would be hours before she came, if she did come; but a
+mad, unreasonable impatience filled him. He thought without knowing why
+that, by arriving ahead of time, he would hasten the countess's coming.
+
+He got out in the square in front of the little palace of Moncloa. The
+cab disappeared in the direction of Madrid, up hill along an avenue that
+was lost in the distance behind an arch of dry branches.
+
+Renovales walked up and down, alone in the little square. The sun was
+shining in a patch of blue sky, among the heavy clouds. In the places
+which its rays did not reach, it was cold. The water ran down from the
+foot of the trees, after dripping from the branches and trickling down
+the trunks; it was melting rapidly. The wood seemed to weep with joy
+under the caress of the sun, that destroyed the last traces of the white
+shroud.
+
+The majestic silence of Nature, abandoned to its own power, surrounded
+the artist. The pines were swinging with the long gusts of wind, filling
+space with a murmur, like the sound of distant harps. The square was
+hidden in the icy shadow of the trees. Up above in the front of the
+palace some pigeons, seeking the sun above the tops of the pines, swept
+around the old flagpole and the classic busts blackened by the weather.
+Then, tired of flying, they settled down on the rusty iron balconies,
+adding to the old building a white fluttering decoration, a rustling
+garland of feathers. In the middle of the square a marble swan, with its
+neck violently stretched toward the sky, threw out a jet, whose murmur
+seemed to heighten the impression of icy cold which he felt in the
+shadow.
+
+Renovales began to walk, crushing the frozen crust that cracked under
+his feet in the shady places. He leaned over the circular iron rail that
+surrounds a part of the square. Through the curtain of black branches,
+where the first buds were beginning to open, he saw the ridge that
+bounds the horizon; the mountains of Guadarrama, phantoms of snow that
+were mingled with the masses of clouds. Nearer, the mountains of Pardo
+stood out with their dark peaks, black with pines, and to the left
+stretched out the slopes of the hills of the Casa de Campo, where the
+first yellow touches of spring were beginning to show.
+
+At his feet lay the fields of Moncloa, the antique little gardens, the
+grove of Viveros, bordering the stream. Carriages were moving in the
+roads below, their varnished tops flashing in the sun like fiery mortar
+boards. The meadows, the foliage of the woods, everything seemed clean
+and bright after the recent storm. The all-pervading green tone, with
+its infinite variations from black to yellow, smiled at the touch of the
+sun after the chill of the snow. In the distance sounded the constant
+reports of shotguns that seemed to tear the air with the intensity that
+is common in still afternoons. They were hunting in the Casa de Campo.
+Between the colonnades of trees and the green sheets of the meadows, the
+water flashed in the sun, bits of ponds, glimpses of canals, pools of
+melted snow, like bright trembling edges of huge swords, lost in the
+grass.
+
+Renovales hardly looked at the landscape; it had no message for him that
+afternoon. He was preoccupied with other things. He saw a smart coupe
+come down the avenue, and he left the belvedere to go to meet it. She
+was coming! But the coupe passed by him, slowly and majestically without
+stopping and he saw through the window an old lady wrapped in furs, with
+sunken eyes and distorted mouth, trembling with old age, her head
+bobbing with the movement of the carriage. It disappeared in the
+direction of the little church beside the palace and the painter was
+alone again.
+
+No! She would not come! His heart began to tell him that there was no
+use waiting.
+
+Some little girls, with battered shoes, and straight greasy hair that
+floated around their necks, began to run about the square. Renovales did
+not see where they came from. Perhaps they were the children of the
+guardian of the palace.
+
+A guard came down the avenue with his gun hanging from his shoulder, and
+his horn at his side. Beyond approached a man in black, who looked like
+a servant, escorted by two huge dogs, two majestic bluish-gray Danes,
+that walked with a dignified bearing, prudent and moderate but proud of
+their terrifying appearance. Not a carriage could be seen. Curses!
+
+Seated on one of the stone benches, the master finally took out the
+little notebook that he always carried with him. He sketched the figures
+of the children as they ran around the fountain. That was one way to
+kill time. One after the other he sketched all the girls, then he caught
+them in several groups, but at last they disappeared behind the palace,
+going down toward the Cano Gordo. Renovales, having nothing to distract
+him, left his seat and walked about, stamping noisily. His feet were
+like ice, this waiting in the cold was putting him in a terrible mood.
+Then he went and sat down on another bench near the servant in black,
+who had the two dogs at his knees. They were sitting on their hind paws,
+resting with as much dignity as real people, watching that gentleman
+with their gray eyes that winked intelligently, as he looked at them
+attentively and then moved his pencil on the book that rested on his
+knee. The painter sketched the two dogs in different postures, giving
+himself up to the work with such interest that he quite forgot his
+purpose in coming there. Oh, what splendid creatures! Renovales loved
+animals in which beauty was united with strength. If he had lived alone
+and could have consulted his own tastes, he would have converted his
+house into a menagerie.
+
+The servant went away with his dogs and the artist once more was left
+alone. Several couples passed slowly, arm in arm, and disappeared behind
+the palace toward the gardens below. Then a group of school boys that
+left behind them, as their cassocks fluttered, that odor of healthy,
+dirty flesh that is peculiar to barracks and convents. And still the
+countess did not come!
+
+The painter went again to rest his elbows on the balustrade of the
+belvedere. He would only wait a half an hour longer. The afternoon was
+wearing away; the sun was still high, but from time to time the
+landscape was darkened. The clouds that had been confined on the horizon
+had been let loose and they were rolling through the field of the sky
+like a flock of sheep, assuming fantastic shapes, rushing eagerly in
+tumultuous confusion as if they wished to swallow the ball of fire that
+was slipping slowly over a bit of clear blue sky.
+
+Suddenly, Renovales felt a sort of shock near his heart. No one had
+touched him; it was a warning of his nerves that for some time had been
+especially irritable. She was near, was coming he was sure. And turning
+around, he saw her, still a long way off, coming down the avenue, in
+black with a fur coat, her hands in a little muff and a veil over her
+eyes. Her tall, graceful silhouette was outlined against the yellow
+ground as she passed the trees. Her carriage was returning up the hill,
+perhaps to wait for her at the top near the School of Agriculture.
+
+As she met him in the center of the square she held out her gloved hand,
+warm from the muff, and they turned toward the belvedere, chatting.
+
+"I'm in a furious mood, disgusted to death. I didn't expect to come; I
+forgot all about it, upon my word. But as I was coming out of the
+President's house I thought of you. I was sure I would find you here.
+And so I have come to have you drive away my ill humor."
+
+Through the veil, Renovales saw her eyes that flashed hostilely and her
+dainty lips angrily tightened.
+
+She spoke quickly, eager to vent the wrath that was swelling her heart,
+without paying any attention to what was around her, as if she were in
+her own drawing room where everything was familiar.
+
+She had been to see the Prime-Minister to recommend her "affair" to his
+attention; a desire of the count's on the fulfillment of which his
+happiness depended. Poor Paco (her husband) dreamed of the Golden
+Fleece. That was the only thing that was lacking to crown the tower of
+crosses, keys and ribbons that he was raising about his person, from his
+belly to his neck, till not an inch of his body was without this
+glorious covering. The Golden Fleece and then death! Why should they not
+do this favor for Paco, such a good man, who would not hurt a fly? What
+would it cost them to grant him this toy and make him happy?
+
+"There aren't any friends any longer, Mariano," said the countess
+bitterly. "The Prime-Minister is a fool who forgets his old friendships
+now that he is head of the government. I who have seen him sighing
+around me like a comic opera tenor, making love to me (yes, I tell the
+truth to you) and ready to commit suicide because I scorned his
+vulgarity and foolishness! This afternoon, the same old story; lots of
+holding my hand, lots of making eyes, 'dear Concha,' 'sweet Concha' and
+other sugary expressions, just such as he sings in Congress like an old
+canary. Sum total, the Fleece is impossible, he is very sorry, but at
+Court they are unwilling."
+
+And the countess, as if she saw for the first time where she was, turned
+her eyes angrily toward the dark hills of the Casa de Campo, where shots
+could still be heard.
+
+"And they wonder that people think this way or that! I am an anarchist,
+do you hear, Mariano? Every day I feel more revolutionary. Don't laugh,
+for it is no jest. Poor Paco, who is a lamb of God, is horrified to
+hear me. 'Woman, think what we are! We must be on good terms with the
+royal house.' But I rise in rebellion; I know them; a crowd of
+reprobates. Why shouldn't my Paco have the Fleece, if the poor man needs
+it. I tell you, master, this cowardly, meek country makes me raging mad.
+We ought to have what France had in '93. If I were alone, without all
+these trifles of name and position, I would do to-day something that
+would stir people. I'd throw a bomb, no, not a bomb; I'd get a revolver
+and----"
+
+"Fire!" shouted the painter, bursting into a laugh.
+
+Concha drew back indignantly.
+
+"Don't joke, master. I'll go away. I'll slap you. This is more serious
+than you think. This afternoon is no time for jokes."
+
+But her fickle nature contradicted the seriousness that she pretended to
+give her words, for she smiled slightly, as if pleased at some memory.
+
+"It wasn't wholly a failure," she said after a long pause. "My hands
+aren't empty. The prime-minister didn't want to make me his enemy and so
+he offered me a compensation, since the 'Lamb' affair was impossible. A
+deputy's chair at the next election."
+
+Renovales' eyes opened in astonishment. "For whom do you want that? To
+whom is that going to be given?"
+
+"To whom?" mimicked Concha with mock astonishment. "To whom! To whom do
+you suppose, you simpleton! Not for you, you don't know anything about
+that or anything else, except your brushes. For Monteverde, for the
+doctor, who will do great things."
+
+The artist's noisy laugh resounded in the silence of the square.
+
+"Darwin a deputy of the majority! Darwin saying 'Aye' and 'No.'"
+
+And after these exclamations his laugh of mock astonishment continued.
+
+"Laugh, you old bear! Open that mouth wider; wag your apostolic beard!
+How funny you are! And what's strange about that? But don't laugh any
+longer; you make me nervous. I'll go away, if you keep on like this."
+
+They remained silent for a long while. The countess was not long in
+forgetting her troubles; her bird-like brain never retained any one
+impression for long. She looked around her with disdainful eyes, eager
+to mortify the painter. Was that what Renovales raved over so? Was there
+nothing more?
+
+They began to walk slowly, going down to the terraced gardens behind the
+palace. They descended the moss-covered slopes that were streaked with
+the black flint of the flights of stairs.
+
+The silence was deathlike. The water murmured as it flowed from the
+trunks of the trees, forming little streams that trickled down hill,
+almost invisible in the grass. In some shady spots there still remained
+piles of snow, like bundles of white wool. The shrill cries of the birds
+sounded like the scratching of a diamond on glass. At the edge of the
+stairways, the pedestals of black, crumbling stone recalled the statues
+and urns they had once supported. The little gardens, cut in geometric
+figures, stretched out the Greek square of their carpet of foliage on
+each level of the terrace. In the squares, the fountains spurted in
+pools surrounded by rusted railings, or flowed down triple layers with a
+ceaseless murmur. Water everywhere,--in the air, in the ground,
+whispering, icy, adding to the cold impression of the landscape, where
+the sun seemed a red blotch of color devoid of heat.
+
+They passed under arches of vines, between huge dying trees covered to
+the top with winding rings of ivy that clung to the venerable trunks,
+veneered with a green and yellow crust. The paths were bounded on one
+side by the slope of the hill, from the top of which came the invisible
+tinkling of a bell, and where from time to time there appeared on the
+blue background of the sky the massive outline of a slowly moving cow.
+On the other, a rustic railing of branches painted white bounded the
+path and, beyond it, in the valley, lay the dark flower beds with their
+melancholy solitude and their fountains that wept day and night in an
+atmosphere of old age and abandon. The closely matted brambles stretched
+from tree to tree along the slopes. The slender cypresses, the tall
+pines with their straight trunks, formed a thick colonnade, a lattice
+through which the sunlight flitted, a false unearthly light, that
+striped the ground with bands of gold and bars of shadow.
+
+The painter praised the spot enthusiastically. It was the only corner
+for artists that could be found in Madrid. It was there that the great
+Don Francisco had worked. It seemed as though at some turn in the path
+they would run into Goya, sitting before his easel, scowling
+ill-naturedly at some dainty duchess who was serving as his model.
+
+Modern clothes seemed out of keeping with this background. Renovales
+declared that the correct apparel for such a landscape was a bright
+coat, a powdered wig, silk stockings, walking beside a Directoire gown.
+
+The countess smiled as she listened to the painter. She looked about
+with great curiosity; that was not a bad walk; she guessed it was the
+first time she ever saw it. Very pretty! But she was not fond of the
+country.
+
+To her mind the best landscape was the silks of a drawing room and, as
+for trees, she preferred the scenery at the Opera to the accompaniment
+of music.
+
+"The country bores me, master. It makes me so sad. If you leave Nature
+alone to itself it is very commonplace."
+
+They entered a little square in the center of which was a pool, on the
+level of the ground, with stone posts that marked where there had once
+been a railing. The water, swollen by the melting snow, was overflowing
+the stone curb, and reached out in a thin sheet as it started down hill.
+The countess stopped, afraid of wetting her feet. The painter went
+ahead, putting his feet in the driest places, taking her hand to guide
+her, and she followed him, laughing at the obstacle and picking up her
+skirts.
+
+As they continued their way down another path, Renovales kept that soft
+little hand in his, feeling its warmth through the glove. She let him
+hold it, as if she did not notice his touch, but still with a faint
+expression of mischievousness on her lips and in her eyes. The master
+seemed undecided, embarrassed, as if he did not know how to begin.
+
+"Always the same?" he asked weakly. "Haven't you a little charity for me
+to-day?"
+
+The countess broke out in a merry laugh.
+
+"There it comes. I was expecting it; that's why I hesitated to come. In
+the carriage I said to myself several times: 'My dear, you're making a
+mistake in going to Moncloa; you will be bored to death; you may expect
+declaration number one thousand.'"
+
+Then she assumed a tone of mock indignation.
+
+"But, master, can't you talk about anything else? Are we women condemned
+to be unable to talk with a man without his feeling obliged to pour out
+a proposal?"
+
+Renovales protested. She might say that to other men, but not to him,
+for he was in love with her. He swore it; he would say it on his knees,
+to make her believe it. Madly in love with her! But she mimicked him
+grotesquely, raising one hand to her breast and laughing cruelly.
+
+"Yes, I know, the old story. There's no use in your repeating it; I know
+it by heart. A volcano in my breast, impossible to live without you--if
+you do not love me, I will kill myself. They all say the same thing. I
+never saw such a lack of originality. Master, for goodness sake, do not
+be so commonplace! A man like you saying such things!"
+
+Renovales was crushed by her mocking mimicry. But Concha, as if she took
+pity on him, hastened to add, in an affectionate tone:
+
+"Why should you have to be in love with me? Do you think I shall esteem
+you less if I relieve you from an obligation that all men who surround
+me feel under? I like you, master; I need to see you; I should be very
+sorry if we quarreled. I like you as a friend; the best of all, the
+first. I like you because you are good; a great big boy; a bearded baby
+who doesn't know even the least bit about the world, but who is very,
+_very_ talented. I've wanted for a long time to see you alone, to talk
+with you quite freely, to tell you this. I like you as I like no one
+else. When I am with you, I feel a confidence such as no other man
+inspires in me. Good friends, brother and sister, if you will. But don't
+put on such a gloomy face! Look pleasant, please! Give one of your
+laughs that cheer my soul, master!"
+
+But the master remained sullen, looking at the ground, running the
+fingers of his hand through his thick beard.
+
+"All that's a lie, Concha," he said rudely. "The truth is that you are
+in love, you're mad over that worthless Monteverde."
+
+The countess smiled, as if the rudeness of these words flattered her.
+
+"Well, yes, Mariano. We like each other; I believe I love him as I
+never loved any man. I have never told anyone; you are the first one to
+hear it from me, because you are my friend, because somehow or other I
+tell you everything. We like each other or, rather, I like him much more
+than he does me. There is something like gratitude in my love. I don't
+deceive myself, Mariano! Thirty-six years! I venture to confess my age
+to you. However, I am still presentable; I keep my youth well, but he is
+much younger. Years younger and I could almost be his mother."
+
+She was silent for a moment, almost frightened at this difference
+between her lover's age and hers, but then she added with a sudden
+confidence:
+
+"He likes me, too, I know. I am his adviser, his inspiration; he says
+that with me he feels a new strength for work, that he will be a great
+man, thanks to me. But I like him more, much more than he does me; there
+is almost as great a difference in our affections as there is in our
+ages."
+
+"And why do you not love me?" said the master tearfully. "I worship you,
+the tables would be turned. I would be the one to surround you with
+constant idolatry, and you would let me worship you, caress you, as I
+would an idol, my head bowed at its feet."
+
+Concha laughed again, mocking the artist's hoarse voice, his passionate
+expression, and his eager eyes.
+
+"Why don't I love you? Master, don't be childish. There's no use in
+asking such things, you cannot dictate to Love. I do not like you as you
+want me to, because it is impossible. Be satisfied to be my best friend.
+You know I show a confidence in you that I do not show to Monteverde.
+Yes, I tell you things I would never tell him."
+
+"But the other part!" exclaimed the painter violently. "What I need,
+what I am hungry for,--you, your beauty, real love!"
+
+"Master, contain yourself," she said with affected modesty. "How well I
+know you! You're going to say some of those horrid things that men
+always say when they rave over a woman. I'm going away so as not to hear
+you."
+
+Then she added with maternal seriousness, as if she wanted to reprimand
+his violence:
+
+"I am not so crazy as people think. I consider the consequences of my
+actions carefully. Mariano, look at yourself, think of your position. A
+wife, a daughter who will marry one of these days, the prospect of being
+a grandfather. And you still think of such follies! I could not accede
+to your proposal even if I loved you. How terrible! To deceive
+Josephina, the friend of my school-days! Poor thing, so gentle, so
+kind,--always ill. No, Mariano, never. A man cannot enter such
+compromising affairs, unless he is free. I could never feel like loving
+you. Friends, nothing more than friends!"
+
+"Well, we will not be that," exclaimed Renovales impetuously. "I will
+leave your house forever. I will not see you any longer. I will do
+anything to forget you. It is an intolerable torment. My life will be
+calmer if I do not see you."
+
+"You will not go away," said Concha quietly, certain of her power. "You
+will remain beside me just as you always have, if you really like me,
+and I shall have in you my best friend. Don't be a baby, master, you
+will see that there is something charming about our friendship that you
+do not understand now. I shall give you something that the rest do not
+know,--intimacy, confidence."
+
+And as she said this, she put one hand on the painter's arm and drew
+closer to him, searching him with her eyes in which there was a strange,
+mysterious light.
+
+A horn sounded near them; there was swift rush of heavy wheels. An
+automobile shot past them at full speed, following the highroad.
+Renovales tried to make out the figures in the car, hardly larger than
+dolls in the distance. Perhaps it was Lopez de Sosa, who was driving,
+perhaps his wife and daughter were those two little figures, wrapped in
+veils, who occupied the seats.
+
+The possibility of Josephina's having passed through the background of
+the landscape without seeing him, without noticing that he was there,
+forgetful of everything, an imploring lover, overcame him with the sense
+of remorse.
+
+They remained motionless for a long while in silence, leaning on the
+rough wooden railing, watching through the colonnade of the trees the
+bright, cherry-red sun, as it sank, lighting up the horizon with a blaze
+of fire. The leaden clouds, seeing it on the point of death, assailed it
+with treacherous greed.
+
+Concha watched the sunset with the interest that a sight but seldom seen
+arouses.
+
+"Look at that huge cloud, master. How black it is! It looks like a
+dragon; no, a hippopotamus; see its round paws, like towers. How it
+runs! It's going to eat the sun. It's eating it! It has swallowed it
+now!"
+
+The landscape grew dark. The sun had disappeared inside of that monster
+that filled the horizon. Its waving back was edged with silver, and as
+if it could not hold the burning star; it broke below, pouring out a
+rain of pale rays. Then, burned by this digestion, it vanished in smoke,
+was torn into black tufts, and once more the red disc appeared, bathing
+sky and earth with gold, peopling the water of the pools with restless
+fiery fishes.
+
+Renovales, leaning on the railing with one elbow beside the countess,
+breathed her subtle fragrance, felt the warm touch of her firm body.
+
+"Let's go back, master," she said with a suggestion of uneasiness in her
+voice. "I feel cold. Besides, with a companion like you, it's impossible
+to stay still."
+
+And she hastened her step, realizing from her experience with men the
+danger of remaining alone with Renovales. His pale, excited face warned
+her that he was likely to make some reckless, impetuous advance.
+
+In the square of Cano Gordo they passed a couple going slowly down the
+hill, very close together, not yet daring to walk arm in arm, but ready
+to put their arms around each other's waists as soon as they disappeared
+in the next path. The young man carried his cloak under his arm, as
+proudly as a gallant in the old comedies; she, small and pale, without
+any beauty except that of youth, was wrapped in a poor cloak and walked
+with her simple eyes fixed on her companion's.
+
+"Some student with his girl," said Renovales. "They are happier than we
+are, Concha."
+
+"We are getting old, master," she said with feigned sadness, excluding
+herself from old age, loading the whole burden of years on her
+companion.
+
+Renovales turned toward her in a final outburst of protest.
+
+"Why should I not be as happy as that boy? Haven't I a right to it?
+Concha, you do not know who I am; you forget it, accustomed as you are
+to treat me like a child. I am Renovales, the painter, the famous
+master. I am known all over the world."
+
+And he spoke of his fame with brutal indelicacy, growing more and more
+irritated at her coldness, displaying his renown like a mantle of light
+that should blind women and make them fall at his feet. And a man like
+him had to submit to being put off for that simpleton of a doctor?
+
+The countess smiled with pity. Her eyes, too, revealed a sort of
+compassion. The fool! The child! How absurd men of talent were!
+
+"Yes, you are a great man, master. That is why I am proud of your
+friendship. I even admit that it gives me some importance. I like you. I
+feel admiration for you."
+
+"No, not admiration, Concha, love! To belong to each other! Complete
+love."
+
+She continued to laugh.
+
+"Oh, my boy; Love!"
+
+Her eyes seemed to speak to him ironically. Love does not distinguish
+talents; it is ignorant and therefore boasts of its blindness. It only
+perceives the fragrance of youth, of life in its flower.
+
+"We shall be friends, Mariano, friends and nothing more. You will grow
+accustomed to it and find our affection dear. Don't be material; it
+doesn't seem as if you were an artist. Idealism, master, that is what
+you need."
+
+And she continued to talk to him from the heights of her pity, until
+they parted near the place where her carriage was waiting for her.
+
+"Friends, Mariano, nothing more than friends, but true friends."
+
+When Concha had gone, Renovales walked in the shadows of the twilight,
+gesticulating and clenching his fists, until he left Moncloa. Finding
+himself alone, he was again filled with wrath and insulted the countess
+mentally, now that he was free from the loving subjection that he
+suffered in her presence. How she amused herself with him! How his
+friends would laugh to see him helplessly submissive to that woman who
+had belonged to so many! His pride made him insist on conquering her,
+at any cost, even of humiliation and brutality. It was an affair of
+honor to make her his, even if it were only once, and then to take
+revenge by repelling her, throwing her at his feet, and saying with a
+sovereign air, "That is what I do to people who resist me."
+
+But then he realized his weakness. He would always be beaten by that
+woman who looked at him coldly, who never lost her calm and considered
+him an inferior being. His dejection made him think of his family, of
+his sick wife, and the duties that bound him to her, and he felt the
+bitter joy of the man who sacrifices himself, taking up his cross.
+
+His mind was made up. He would flee from the woman. He would not see her
+again.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+And he did not see her; he did not see her for two days. But on the
+third there came a letter in a long blue envelope scented with a perfume
+that made him tremble.
+
+The countess complained of his absence in affectionate terms. She needed
+to see him, she had many things to tell him. A real love-letter which
+the artist hastened to hide, for fear that if any one read it, he would
+suspect what was not yet true.
+
+Renovales was indignant.
+
+"I will go to see her," he said to himself, walking up and down the
+studio. "But it will be only to give her a piece of my mind, and have
+done with her once and for all. If she thinks she is going to play with
+me, she is mistaken; she doesn't know that, when I want to be, I am like
+stone."
+
+Poor master! While in one corner of his mind he was formulating this
+cruel determination to be a man of stone, in the other a sweet voice was
+murmuring seductively:
+
+"Go quickly, take advantage of the opportunity. Perhaps she has
+repented. She is waiting for you; she is going to be yours."
+
+And the artist hastened to the countess's anxiously. Nothing. She
+complained of his absence with affected sadness. She liked him so much!
+She needed to see him, she could not have any peace as long as she felt
+that he was offended with her on account of the other afternoon. And
+they spent nearly two hours together in the private room she used as an
+office, until at the end of the afternoon the serious friends of the
+countess began to arrive, her coterie of mute worshipers and last of
+all Monteverde with the calm of a man who has nothing to fear.
+
+The painter left the house. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened
+except that he had twice kissed the countess's hand; the conventional
+caress and nothing more. Whenever he tried to go farther, moving his
+lips along her arm, she checked him imperiously.
+
+"I shall be angry, master, and not receive you any more alone! You are
+not keeping the agreement!"
+
+Renovales protested. They had not made any agreement; but Concha managed
+to calm him instantly by asking about Milita, praising her beauty,
+inquiring for poor Josephina, so good, so lovable, showing great concern
+for her health and promising to call on her soon. And the master was
+restrained, tormented by remorse, not daring to make any new advances,
+until his discomfort had disappeared.
+
+He continued to visit the countess, as before. He felt that he must see
+her; he had grown accustomed to her enthusiastic praise of his artistic
+merits.
+
+Sometimes the impetuous nature of his youthful days awakened and he
+longed to rid himself of this shameful chain. The woman had bewitched
+him; she sent for him without any reason, she seemed to delight in
+making him suffer, she needed him for a plaything. She spoke of
+Monteverde and their love with quiet cynicism, as if the doctor were her
+husband. She had to confide the secrets of her life to some one, with
+that imperious naivete that forces the guilty to confess. Little by
+little she let the master into the secret of her passion, telling him
+unblushingly of the most intimate details of their meetings, which were
+often in her own house. They took advantage of the blindness of the
+count, who seemed almost stunned by his failure to receive the Fleece;
+they took a morbid delight in the danger of being surprised.
+
+"I tell you this, Mariano, I don't know why it is I feel as I do toward
+you; I like you as a brother. No, not as a brother, rather as a
+confidential woman friend."
+
+When Renovales was alone, he despised Concha's frankness. It was just as
+people believed; she was very attractive, very pretty, but absolutely
+lacking in scruples. As for himself, he heaped insults on himself in the
+slang of his Bohemian days, comparing himself with all the horned
+animals he could think of.
+
+"I won't go there again. It's disgraceful. A pretty part you are
+playing, master!"
+
+But he had hardly been absent two days when Marie, the Countess's French
+maid, appeared with the scented letter, or it arrived in the mail, where
+it stood out scandalously among the other envelopes of the master's
+correspondence.
+
+"Curse that woman!" exclaimed Renovales, hastening to hide the showy
+note. "What a lack of prudence. One of these fine days, Josephina will
+discover these letters."
+
+Cotoner, in his blind devotion to his idol whom he considered
+irresistible, supposed that the Alberca woman was madly in love with the
+master and shook his head sadly.
+
+"This will have a bad end, Mariano. You ought to break with her. The
+peace of your home! You are piling up trouble for yourself."
+
+The letters were always alike; endless complaints at his short absences.
+"_Cher maitre_, I could not sleep last night, thinking of you," and she
+ended with "Your admirer and good friend, Coquillerosse," a _nom de
+guerre_ she had adopted for her correspondence with the artist.
+
+She wrote in a disordered style, at unusual hours, just as her fancy
+and her abnormal nervous system prompted. Sometimes she dated her letter
+at three in the morning, she could not sleep, got out of bed and to pass
+the sleepless hours filled four sheets of paper (with the facility of
+despair) in her fine hand, addressed to her good friend, talking to him
+of the count, of what her acquaintances said, telling him the latest
+gossip about the Court, lamenting the doctor's coldness. At other times,
+there were only four brief, desperate lines. "Come at once, dear
+Mariano. A very urgent matter."
+
+And the master, leaving his tasks early in the morning, ran to the
+countess' house, where she received him still in bed in her fragrant
+chamber which the gentleman with honorary crosses had not entered for
+many years.
+
+The painter came in in great anxiety, disturbed at the possibility of
+some terrible event, and Concha, tossing about between the embroidered
+sheets, tucking in the golden wisps of hair that escaped from her lace
+cap, talked and talked, as incoherently as a bird sings, as if the
+silence of the night had hopelessly confused her ideas. A great idea had
+occurred to her; during her sleep she had thought out an absolutely
+original scientific theory that would delight Monteverde. And she
+explained it earnestly to the master, who nodded his approval without
+understanding a word, thinking it was a pity to see such an attractive
+mouth uttering such follies.
+
+At other times she would talk to him about the speech she was preparing
+for a fair of the Woman's Association, the _magnum opus_ of her
+presidency; and drawing her ivory arms from under the sheet with a
+calmness that dazed Renovales, she would pick up from the nearby table
+some sheets of paper scribbled with pencil, and ask her friend to tell
+her who was the greatest painter in the world, for she had left a blank
+to fill in with this name.
+
+After an hour of incessant chatter while the artist watched her silently
+with greedy eyes, he finally came to the urgent matter, the desperate
+summons that had made the master leave his work. It was always an affair
+of life or death, compromises in which her honor was at stake. Sometimes
+she wanted him to paint some little thing on the fan of a foreign lady
+who was eager to take away from Spain some souvenir of the great master.
+The person in question had asked her at a diplomatic soiree the night
+before, knowing her friendship with Renovales. Or she had sent for him
+to ask him for some little sketch, a daub, any one of the little things
+that lay in the corner of his studio for a bazaar of the Association for
+the Benefit of Fallen Women, whom the countess and her friends were very
+eager to rescue.
+
+"Don't put on such a wry face, master, don't be stingy. You must expect
+to sacrifice something for friendship. Everybody thinks that I have
+great power over the famous artist, and they ask me favors and are
+constantly getting me into difficulty. They don't know you, they don't
+realize how perverse, how rebellious you are, you horrid man!"
+
+And she let him kiss her hand, smiling condescendingly. But as she felt
+the touch of his lips and his beard on her arm she struggled to free
+herself, half-laughing, half-trembling.
+
+"Let me go, Mariano! I'll scream! I'll call Marie! I won't receive you
+again in my bedroom. You aren't worthy of being trusted. Quiet, master,
+or I'll tell Josephina everything."
+
+Sometimes when Renovales came, full of alarm at her summons, he found
+her pale, with dark circles under her eyes, as if she had spent the
+night weeping. When she saw the master her tears began to flow again. It
+was pique, deep pain at Monteverde's coldness. He passed whole days
+without seeing her; he even went so far as to say that women are a
+hindrance to serious study. Oh, these scholars! And she, madly devoted
+to him, submissive as a slave, putting up with his whimsical moods,
+worshiping him with that ardent passion of a woman who is older than her
+lover and appreciates her own inferiority!
+
+"Oh, Renovales. Never fall in love. It is hell. You do not know the
+happiness you enjoy in not understanding these things."
+
+But the master, indifferent to her tears, enraged by her confidences,
+walked up and down gesticulating, just as if he were in his studio, and
+he spoke to the countess with brutal frankness, as he would to a woman
+who had revealed all her secrets and weaknesses. What difference did all
+that make to him? Had she sent for him to tell him such stuff? She
+grieved with childish sighs from the bed. She was alone in the world,
+she was very unhappy. The master was her only friend; he was her father,
+her brother. To whom could she tell her troubles if not to him? And
+taking courage at the painter's silence who finally was moved by her
+tears, she recovered her boldness and expressed her wish. He must go to
+Monteverde, give him a good, heart-to-heart lecture, so that he would be
+good and not make her suffer. The doctor respected him highly; he was
+one of his greatest admirers; she was certain that a few words of the
+master would be enough to bring him back like a lamb. He must show him
+that she was not alone, that she had some one to defend her, that no one
+could make sport of her with impunity.
+
+But before she finished her request, the painter was walking around the
+bed waving his arms, cursing in the violence of his excitement.
+
+"That's the last straw! One of these days you'll be asking me to shine
+his boots. Are you mad, woman? What are you thinking of? You have enough
+accommodating people already in the count. Don't drag me into it!"
+
+But she rolled over in bed, weeping disconsolately. She had no friends
+left! The master was like the others; if he would not accede to her
+requests, their friendship was over. All talk, oaths, and then not the
+least sacrifice!
+
+Suddenly she sat up, frowning angrily with the coldness of an offended
+queen. She knew him at last, she had made a mistake in counting on him.
+And as Renovales, confused at her anger, tried to offer excuse, she
+interrupted him haughtily.
+
+"Will you, or will you not? One, two----"
+
+Yes, he would do what she wanted; he had sunk so low that it did not
+matter if he went a little farther. He would lecture the doctor,
+throwing in his face his stupidity in scorning such happiness,--he said
+this with all his heart, his voice trembling with envy. What else did
+his fair despot want? She might ask without fear. If it was necessary he
+would challenge the count, with all his decorations, to single combat
+and would kill him so that she might be free to join her little doctor.
+
+"You joker," cried Concha, smiling at her triumph. "You are as nice as
+can be but you are very perverse. Come here, you horrid man."
+
+And lifting a lock of his heavy hair with her hand, she kissed him on
+the forehead, laughing at the start the painter gave at her caress. He
+felt his legs trembling, then his arms strove to embrace the warm,
+scented body, that seemed to slip from him in its delicate covering.
+
+"It was on the forehead," cried Concha in protest. "A sister's caress,
+Mariano. Stop! You're hurting me! I'll call!"
+
+And she called, realizing her weakness, seeing that she was on the point
+of being overcome in his fierce, masterly grasp. The electric bell
+sounded out of the maze of corridors and rooms and the door opened.
+Marie entered in a black dress with a white apron and a lace cap,
+discreet and silent. Her pale, smiling face, accustomed to see
+everything, to guess everything, did not reveal the slightest
+impression.
+
+The countess stretched out her hand to Renovales, calmly and
+affectionately, as if the entrance of the maid had found her saying
+good-by. She was sorry that he must go so soon, she would see him in the
+evening at the Opera.
+
+When the painter breathed the air of the street and jostled against the
+people, he felt as if he were awakening from a nightmare. He loathed
+himself. "You're showing off finely, master." His weakness that made him
+give in to all of the countess's demands, his base acquiescence in
+serving as an intermediary between her and her lover was sickening now.
+But he still felt the touch of her kiss on his forehead; he still
+breathed the atmosphere of the bedroom, heavy with perfume. Optimism
+overcame him. The affair was not going badly. However disagreeable the
+path was, it would lead to the realization of his desire.
+
+Many evenings Renovales went to the Opera, in obedience to Concha, who
+wanted to see him, and spent whole acts in the back of her box,
+conversing with her. Milita laughed at this change in the habits of her
+father, who used to go to bed early, so as to be able to work early in
+the morning. She was the one who, charged with the household affairs on
+account of her mother's constant illness, helped him to put on his
+dress-coat, and amid caresses and laughter combed his hair and adjusted
+his tie.
+
+"Papa, dear. I shouldn't know you, you're getting dissipated. When are
+you going to take me with you?"
+
+The artist excused himself seriously. It was a duty of his profession;
+artists must go into society. And as for taking her with him--some other
+time. He had to go alone this time, he had to talk to a great many
+people at the theater.
+
+Another change took place in him that provoked joyful comments on the
+part of Milita. Papa was getting young.
+
+Under irreverent trimmings, every week his hair became shorter, his
+beard diminished until only a light remnant remained of that tangled
+growth that gave him such a ferocious appearance. He did not want to
+look like other men, he must preserve the exterior that stamped him as
+an artist, so that people might not pass by the great Renovales without
+recognizing him. But he managed, while keeping within this desire, to
+approach and mingle with the fashionably dressed young men who
+frequented the countess's house.
+
+Other people too noticed this change. Students in the School of Fine
+Arts pointed him out from the gallery of the Opera-house or stopped on
+the sidewalk when they saw him at night, with a shining silk hat on his
+carefully trimmed hair and the expanse of shirt-front showing in his
+unbuttoned overcoat. The boys in their simple admiration imagined the
+great master thundering before his easel, as savage, fierce and
+intractable as Michael Angelo in his studio. And so when they saw him
+looking so differently, their eyes followed him enviously. "What a good
+time the master is having!" And they fancied the great ladies disputing
+over him, believing in perfect faith that no woman could resist a man
+who painted so well.
+
+His enemies, established artists but who were inferior to him, growled
+in their conversations. "Four-flusher, prig! He wasn't satisfied with
+making so much money and now he's playing the sport among the
+aristocracy, to pick up more portraits, to get all he can out of his
+signature."
+
+Cotoner, who sometimes stayed at the house in the evenings, to keep the
+ladies company, smiled sadly as he saw him leave, shaking his head.
+"It's bad. Mariano married too soon. Now that he is almost an old man,
+he's doing what he didn't do in his youth in his fever for work and
+glory." Many people were laughing at him already, divining his passion
+for the Alberca woman, that love without practical results, that made
+him live with her and Monteverde, acting as a good-natured mediator, a
+tolerant kindly father. When the famous master took off his mask of
+fierceness, he was a poor fellow about whom people talked with pity:
+they compared him with Hercules, dressed as a woman and spinning at the
+feet of his fair seducer.
+
+He had contracted a close friendship with Monteverde as a result of
+meeting him so often at the countess's. He no longer seemed foolish and
+unattractive. Renovales found in him something of the woman he loved and
+therefore his company was pleasing. He experienced that calm attraction,
+free from jealousy, that the husband of a mistress inspires in some men.
+They sat together at the theater, went to walk, conversing amiably, and
+the doctor frequently visited the artist's studio in the afternoon. This
+intimacy quite disconcerted people, for they could no longer tell with
+certainty which one was the Alberca woman's master and which the
+aspirant, even going so far as to believe that by a mutual agreement
+they all three lived in an ideal world.
+
+Monteverde admired the master and the latter, from his years and the
+superiority of his fame, assumed a paternal authority over him. He
+chided him when the countess complained of him.
+
+"Women!" the doctor would say with a bored expression. "You don't know
+what they are, master. They are only a hindrance to obstruct a man's
+career. You have been successful because you haven't let them dominate
+you because you are strong."
+
+And the poor strong man looked at Monteverde narrowly suspecting that he
+was making sport of him. He felt tempted to knock him down at the
+thought that the doctor scorned what he craved so keenly.
+
+Concha was more communicative with the master. She confessed to him what
+she had never dared to tell the doctor.
+
+"I tell you everything, Mariano. I cannot live without seeing you. Do
+you know what I think? The doctor is a sort of husband to me and you are
+the lover of my heart. Don't get excited; don't move or I'll call. I
+have spoken from my heart. I like you too much to think of the coarse
+things you want."
+
+Sometimes Renovales found her excited, nervous, speaking hoarsely,
+working her delicate fingers as if she wanted to scratch the air. They
+were terrible days that stirred up the whole house. Marie ran from room
+to room with her silent step, pursued by the ringing of the bells; the
+count slipped out of doors, like a frightened school-boy. Concha was
+bored, felt tired of everything, hated her life. When the painter
+appeared she would almost throw herself in his arms.
+
+"Take me out of here, Mariano; I'm tired of it, I'm dying. This life is
+killing me. My husband! He doesn't count. My friends! Fools that flay
+me as soon as I leave them. The doctor! as untrustworthy as a
+weathercock. All those men in my coterie, idiots. Master, have pity on
+me. Take me far away from here. You must know some other world; artists
+know everything."
+
+If she only was not such a familiar figure and if people only did not
+know the master in Madrid! In her nervous excitement she formed the
+wildest projects. She wanted to go out at night arm in arm with
+Renovales. She in a shawl and a kerchief over her head and he in a cape
+and a slouch hat. She would be his grisette; she would imitate the
+carriage and stride of a woman of the streets and they would go to the
+lowest districts like two night-hawks, and they would drink, would get
+into a brawl; he would defend her and they would go and spend the night
+in the police station.
+
+The painter looked shocked. What nonsense! But she insisted on her wish.
+
+"Laugh, master, open that great mouth of yours, you ugly thing. What is
+strange about what I said? You, with all your artist's hair and soft
+hats, are humdrum, a peaceful soul that is incapable of doing anything
+original in order to amuse yourself."
+
+When she thought of the couple they had seen one afternoon at Moncloa,
+she grew melancholy and sentimental. She, too, thought it would be fun
+to play the grisette, to walk arm in arm with the master as if she were
+a poor dressmaker and he a clerk, to end the trip in a picnic park, and
+he would give her a ride in the green swing, while she screamed with
+pleasure, as she went up and down with her skirts whirling around her
+feet. That was not foolishness. Just the simplest, most rustic pleasure!
+
+What a pity that they were both so well known. But what they would do,
+at least, was to disguise themselves some morning and go house-hunting
+in some low quarter, like the Rastro, as if they were a newly married
+couple. No one would recognize them in that part of Madrid. Agreed,
+master?
+
+And the master approved of everything. But the next day, Concha received
+him with confusion, biting her lips, until at last she broke out into
+hearty laughter at the recollection of the follies she had proposed.
+
+"How you must laugh at me! Some days I am perfectly crazy."
+
+Renovales did not conceal his assent. Yes, she was a trifle crazy. But
+with all her absurdities that made him alternate between hope and
+despair, she was more attractive, with her merry nonsense, and her
+transitory fits of anger, than the woman at home, implacable, silent,
+shunning him with ceaseless repugnance, but following him everywhere
+with her weeping, uncanny eyes, that became as cutting as steel, as soon
+as, out of sympathy or remorse, he gave the least evidence of
+familiarity.
+
+Oh, what a heavy, intolerable comedy! Before his daughter and his
+friends they had to talk to each other, and he, looking away, so that
+their eyes might not meet, scolded her gently, for not following the
+advice of the doctors. At first they had said it was neurasthenia, now
+it was diabetes, that was increasing the invalid's weakness. The master
+lamented the passive resistance she opposed to all their curative
+methods. She would follow them for a few days and then give them up with
+calm obstinacy. Her health was better than they thought: doctors could
+not cure her trouble.
+
+At night, when they entered the bed-chamber, a deathly silence fell on
+them; a leaden wall seemed to rise between their bodies. Here they no
+longer had to dissemble; they looked at each other face to face with
+silent hostility. Their life at night was sheer torment, but neither of
+them dared to change their mode of living. Their bodies could not leave
+the common bed; they found in it the places they had occupied for years.
+The habit of their wills subjected them to this room and its
+furnishings, with all its memories of the happy days of their youth.
+
+Renovales would fall into the deep sleep of a healthy man, tired out
+with work. His last thoughts were of the countess. He saw her in that
+vague mist that shrouds the portal of unconsciousness; he went to sleep,
+thinking of what he would say to her the next day. And his dreams were
+in keeping with his desires, for he saw her standing on a pedestal, in
+all the majesty of her nakedness, surpassing the marble of the most
+famous statues with the life of her flesh. When he awakened suddenly and
+stretched out his arms, he touched the body of his companion, small,
+stiff, burning with the fire of fever or icy with deathly cold. He
+divined that she was not asleep. She spent the nights without closing
+her eyes, but she did not move, as if all her strength was concentrated
+on something that she watched in the darkness with a hypnotic stare. She
+was like a corpse. There was the obstacle, the leaden weight, the
+phantom that checked the other woman when sometimes in a moment of
+hesitation, she leaned toward him, on the point of falling. And the
+terrible longing, the hideous thought came forth again in all its
+ugliness, announcing that it was not dead, that it had only hidden in
+the den of his brain, to rise more cruelly, more insolently.
+
+"Why not?" argued the rejected spirit, scattering in his fancy the
+golden dust of dreams.
+
+Love, fame, joy, a new artistic life, the rejuvenation of Doctor
+Faustus; he might expect everything, if kindly death would but come to
+help him, breaking the chain that bound him to sadness and sickness.
+
+But straightway a protest would arise within him. Though he lived like
+an infidel, he still had a religious soul that in the trying moments of
+his life led him to call on all the superhuman and miraculous powers as
+if they were under an inevitable obligation to come to his aid. "Lord,
+take this horrible thought from me. Take away this temptation. Don't let
+her die. Let her live, even if I perish."
+
+And the following day, filled with remorse, he would go to some doctors,
+friends of his, to consult with them minutely. He would stir up the
+house, organizing the cure according to a vast plan, distributing the
+medicines by hours. Then he would calmly return to his work, to his
+artistic prejudices, to his passionate longing, forgetting his
+determinations, thinking his wife's life was already saved.
+
+One afternoon after luncheon, she came into the studio and as the master
+looked at her, a sense of anxiety crept over him. It was a long time
+since Josephina had entered the room while he was working.
+
+She would not sit down; standing beside the easel she spoke slowly and
+meekly to her husband, without looking at him. Renovales was frightened
+at this simplicity.
+
+"Mariano, I have come to talk to you about our daughter."
+
+She wanted her to be married: it must come some day and the sooner, the
+better. She would die before long and she wanted to leave the world with
+the assurance that her daughter was well settled.
+
+Renovales felt forced to protest loudly with all the vehemence of a man
+who is not very sure of what he is saying. Shucks! Die! Why should she
+die? Her health was better now than it had ever been. The only thing she
+needed was to heed what the doctors told her.
+
+"I shall die before long," she repeated coldly; "I shall die and you
+will be left in peace. You know it."
+
+The painter tried to protest with a greater show of righteous
+indignation but his eyes met his wife's cold look. Then he contented
+himself with shrugging his shoulders in a resigned way. He did not want
+to argue; he must keep calm. He had to paint; he must go out that
+afternoon as usual on important business.
+
+"Very well, go ahead. Milita is going to be married. And to whom?"
+
+Led by his desire to maintain his authority, to take the lead, and
+because of his long-standing affection for his pupil, he hastened to
+speak of him. Was Soldevilla the suitor? A good boy with a future ahead
+of him. He worshiped Milita; his dejection when she treated him ill was
+pitiful. He would make an excellent husband.
+
+Josephina cut short her husband's chatter in a cold, contemptuous tone.
+
+"I don't want any painters for my daughter; you know it. Her mother has
+had enough of them."
+
+Milita was going to marry Lopez de Sosa. The matter was already settled
+as far as she was concerned. The boy had spoken to her and, assured of
+her approval, would ask the father.
+
+"But does she love him? Do you think, Josephina, that these things can
+be arranged to suit you?"
+
+"Yes, she loves him; she is suited and wants to be married. Besides she
+is your daughter; she would accept the other man just as readily. What
+she wants is freedom, to get away from her mother, not to live in the
+unhappy atmosphere of my ill health. She doesn't say so, she doesn't
+even know that she thinks it, but I see through her."
+
+And as if, while she spoke of her daughter, she could not maintain the
+coldness she had toward her husband, she raised her hand to her eyes,
+to wipe away the silent tears.
+
+Renovales had recourse to rudeness in order to get out of the
+difficulty. It was all nonsense; an invention of her diseased mind. She
+ought to think of getting well and nothing else. What was she crying
+for! Did she want to marry her daughter to that automobile enthusiast?
+Well, get him. She did not want to? Well, let the girl stay at home.
+
+She was the one who had charge; no one was hindering her. Have the
+marriage as soon as possible? He was a mere cipher, and there was no
+reason for asking his advice. But steady, shucks! He had to work; he had
+to go out. And when he saw Josephina leaving the studio to weep
+somewhere else, he gave a snort of satisfaction, glad to have escaped
+from this difficult scene so successfully.
+
+Lopez de Sosa was all right. An excellent boy! Or anyone else. He did
+not have time to give to such matters. Other things occupied his
+attention.
+
+He accepted his future son-in-law, and for several evenings he stayed at
+home to lend a sort of patriarchal air to the family parties. Milita and
+her betrothed talked at one end of the drawing-room. Cotoner, in the
+full bliss of digestion, strove with his jests to bring a faint smile to
+the face of the master's wife, but she stayed in the corner, shivering
+with cold. Renovales, in a smoking jacket, read the papers, soothed by
+the charming atmosphere of his quiet home. If the countess could only
+see him!
+
+One night the Alberca woman's name was mentioned in the drawing-room.
+Milita was running over from memory the list of friends of the
+family,--prominent ladies who would not fail to honor her approaching
+marriage with some magnificent present.
+
+"Concha won't come," said the girl. "It's a long time since she has been
+here."
+
+There was a painful silence, as if the countess's name chilled the
+atmosphere. Cotoner hummed a tune, pretending to be thinking of
+something else; Lopez de Sosa began to look for a piece of music on the
+piano, talking about it to change the subject. He too seemed to be aware
+of the matter.
+
+"She doesn't come because she doesn't have to come," said Josephina from
+her corner. "Your father manages to see her every day, so that she won't
+forget us."
+
+Renovales raised his eyes in protest, as if he were awakening from a
+calm sleep. Josephina's gaze was fixed on him, not angry, but mocking
+and cruel. It reflected the same scorn with which she had wounded him on
+that unhappy night. She no longer said anything, but the master read in
+those eyes:
+
+"It is useless, my good man. You are mad over her, you pursue her, but
+she belongs to other men. I know her of old. I know all about it. Oh,
+how people laugh at you! How I laugh! How I scorn you!"
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The beginning of summer saw the wedding of the daughter of Renovales to
+Lopez de Sosa. The papers published whole columns on the event, in
+which, according to some of the reporters, "the glory and splendor of
+art were united with the prestige of aristocracy and fortune." No one
+remembered now the nickname "Pickled Herring."
+
+The master Renovales did things well. He had only one daughter and he
+was eager to marry her with royal pomp; eager that Madrid and all Spain
+should know of the affair, that a ray of the glory her father had won
+might fall on Milita.
+
+The list of gifts was long. All the friends of the master, society
+ladies, political leaders, famous artists, and even royal personages,
+appeared in it with their corresponding presents. There was enough to
+fill a store. Both of the studios for visitors were converted into show
+rooms with countless tables loaded with articles, a regular fair of
+clothes and jewelry, that was visited by all of Milita's girl friends,
+even the most distant and forgotten, who came to congratulate her, pale
+with envy.
+
+The Countess of Alberca, too, sent a huge, showy gift, as if she did not
+want to remain unnoticed among the friends of the house. Doctor
+Monteverde was represented by a modest remembrance, though he had no
+other connection with the family than his friendship with the master.
+
+The wedding was celebrated at the house, where one of the studios was
+converted into a chapel. Cotoner had a hand in everything that concerned
+the ceremony, delighted to be able to show his influence with the people
+of the Church.
+
+Renovales took charge of the arrangements of the altar, eager to display
+the touch of an artist even in the least details. On a background of
+ancient tapestries he placed an old triptych, a medieval cross; all the
+articles of worship which filled his studio as decorations, cleaned now
+from dust and cobwebs, recovered for a few moments their religious
+importance.
+
+A variegated flood of flowers filled the master's house. Renovales
+insisted on having them everywhere; he had sent to Valencia and Murcia
+for them in reckless quantities; they hung on the door-frames, and along
+the cornices; they lay in huge clusters on the tables and in the
+corners. They even swung in pagan garlands from one column of the facade
+to another, arousing the curiosity of the passers-by, who crowded
+outside of the iron fence,--women in shawls, boys with great baskets on
+their heads who stood in open-mouthed wonder before the strange sight,
+waiting to see what was going on in that unusual house, following the
+coming and going of the servants who carried in music stands and two
+base viols, hidden in varnished cases.
+
+Early in the morning Renovales was hurrying about with two ribbons
+across his shirt front and a constellation of golden, flashing stars
+covering one whole side of his coat. Cotoner, too, had put on the
+insignia of his various Papal Orders. The master looked at himself in
+all the mirrors with considerable satisfaction, admiring equally his
+friend. They must look handsome; a celebration like this they would
+never see again. He plied his companion with incessant questions, to
+make sure that nothing had been overlooked in the preparations. The
+master Pedraza, a great friend of Renovales, was to conduct the
+orchestra. They had gathered all the best players in Madrid, for the
+most part from the Opera. The choir was a good one, but the only notable
+artists they had been able to secure were people who made the capital
+their residence. The season was not the best; the theaters were closed.
+
+Cotoner continued to explain the measures he had taken. Promptly at ten
+the Nuncio, Monsignore Orlandi,--a great friend of his--would arrive; a
+handsome chap, still young, whom he had met in Rome when he was attached
+to the Vatican. A word on Cotoner's part was all that was necessary to
+persuade him to do them the honor of marrying the children. Friends are
+useful at times! And the painter of the popes, proud of his sudden rise
+to importance, went from room to room, arranging everything, followed by
+the master who approved of his orders.
+
+In the studio, the orchestra and the table for the luncheon were set.
+The other rooms were for the guests. Was anything forgotten? The two
+artists looked at the altar with its dark tapestries, and its
+candelabra, crosses and reliquaries, of dull, old gold that seemed to
+absorb the light rather than reflect it. Nothing was lacking. Ancient
+fabrics and garlands of flowers covered the walls, hiding the master's
+studies in color, unfinished pictures, profane works that could not be
+tolerated in the discreet, harmonious atmosphere of that chapel-like
+room. The floor was partly covered with costly rugs, Persian and
+Moorish. In front of the altar were two praying desks and behind them,
+for the more important guests, all the luxurious chairs of the studio:
+white armchairs of the 18th Century, embroidered with pastoral scenes,
+Greek settles, benches of carved oak and Venetian chairs with high
+backs, the bizarre confusion of an antique shop.
+
+Suddenly Cotoner started back as if he were shocked. How careless! A
+fine thing it would have been if he had not noticed it! At the end of
+the studio, opposite the altar that screened a large part of the window,
+and directly in its light, stood a huge, white, naked woman. It was the
+"Venus de Medici," a superb piece of marble that Renovales had brought
+from Italy. Its pagan beauty in its dazzling whiteness seemed to
+challenge the deathly yellow of the religious objects that filled the
+other end of the studio. Accustomed to see it, the two artists had
+passed in front of it several times without noticing its nakedness that
+seemed more insolent and triumphant now that the studio was converted
+into an oratory.
+
+Cotoner began to laugh.
+
+"What a scandal if we hadn't seen it! What would the ladies have said!
+My friend Orlandi would have thought that you did it on purpose, for he
+considers you rather lax morally. Come, my boy, let's get something to
+cover up this lady."
+
+After much searching in the disorder of the studio, they found a piece
+of Indian cotton, scrawled with elephants and lotus flowers; they
+stretched it over the goddess's head, so that it covered her down to her
+feet and there it stood, like a mystery, a riddle for the guests.
+
+They were beginning to arrive. Outside of the house, at the fence
+sounded the stamping of the horses, the slam of doors as they closed. In
+the distance rumbled other carriages, drawing nearer every minute. The
+swish of silk on the floor sounded in the hall, and the servants ran
+back and forth, receiving wraps and putting numbers on them, as at the
+theater, to stow them away in the parlor that had been converted into a
+coat-room. Cotoner directed the servants, smooth shaven or wearing
+side-whiskers, and clad in faded dress-suits. Renovales meanwhile was
+wreathed in smiles, bowing graciously, greeting the ladies who came in
+their black or white mantillas, grasping the hands of the men, some of
+whom wore brilliant uniforms.
+
+The master felt elated at this procession which ceremoniously passed
+through his drawing-rooms and studios. In his ears, the swish of skirts,
+the movement of fans, the greetings, the praise of his good taste
+sounded like caressing music. Everyone came with the same satisfaction
+in seeing and being seen, which people reveal on a first night at the
+theater or at some brilliant reception. Good music, presence of the
+Nuncio, preparations for the luncheon which they seemed to sniff
+already, and besides, the certainty of seeing their names in print the
+next day, perhaps of having their picture in some illustrated magazine.
+Emilia Renovales' wedding was an event.
+
+Among the crowd of people that continued to pour in were seen several
+young men, hastily holding up their cameras. They were going to have
+snap-shots! Those who retained some bitterness against the artist,
+remembering how dearly they had paid him for a portrait, now pardoned
+him generously and excused his robbery. There was an artist that lived
+like a gentleman! And Renovales went from one side to another, shaking
+hands, bowing, talking incoherently, not knowing in which direction to
+turn. For a moment, while he stood in the hall, he saw a bit of sunlit
+garden, covered with flowers and beyond a fence a black mass: the
+admiring, smiling throng. He breathed the odor of roses and subtle
+perfumes, and felt the rapture of optimism flood his breast. Life was a
+great thing. The poor rabble, crowded together outside, made him recall
+with pride the blacksmith's son. Heavens, how he had risen! He felt
+grateful to those wealthy, idle people who supported his well-being; he
+made every effort so that they might lack nothing, and overwhelmed
+Cotoner with his suggestions. The latter turned on the master with the
+arrogance of one who is in authority. His place was inside, with the
+guests. He need not mind him, for he knew his duties. And turning his
+back on Mariano, he issued orders to the servants and showed the way to
+the new arrivals, recognizing their station at a glance. "This way,
+gentlemen."
+
+It was a group of musicians and he led them through a servants' hallway
+so that they might get to their stands without having to mingle with the
+guests. Then he turned to scold a crowd of bakerboys, who were late in
+bringing the last shipments of the luncheon and advanced through the
+assemblage, raising the great, wicker baskets over the heads of the
+ladies.
+
+Cotoner left his place when he saw rising from the stairway a plush hat
+with gold tassels over a pale face, then a silk cassock with purple sash
+and buttons, flanked by two others, black and modest.
+
+_"Oh, monsignore! Monsignore Orlandi! Va bene? Va bene?"_
+
+He kissed his hand with a profound reverence, and after inquiring
+anxiously for his health, as if he had not seen him the day before,
+started off, opening a passage way in the crowded drawing-rooms.
+
+"The Nuncio! The Nuncio of His Holiness!"
+
+The men, with the decorum of decent persons, who know how to show
+respect for dignitaries, stopped laughing and talking to the ladies, and
+bent forward, as he passed, to take that delicate, pale hand, which
+looked like the hand of a lady of the olden days, and kiss the huge
+stone of its ring. The ladies, with moist eyes, looked for a moment at
+Monsignor Orlandi,--a distinguished prelate, a diplomat of the Church,
+a noble of the Old Roman nobility,--tall, thin, pale as chalk, with
+black hair and imperious eyes in which there was an intense flash of
+flame.
+
+He moved with the haughty grace of a bull-fighter. The lips of the women
+rested eagerly on his hand, while he gazed with enigmatical eyes at the
+line of graceful necks bowed before him. Cotoner continued ahead,
+opening a passage, proud of his part, elated at the respect which his
+illustrious friend inspired. What a wonderful thing religion was!
+
+He accompanied him to the sacristy, which once was the dressing-room for
+the models. He remained outside, discreetly, but every other minute some
+one of the Nuncio's attendants came out in search of him,--sprightly
+young fellows with a feminine carriage and a faint suggestion of perfume
+about them, who looked on the artist with respect, believing he was an
+important personage. They called to Signor Cotoner, asking him to help
+them find something Monsignor had sent the day before, and the Bohemian,
+in order to avoid further requests, finally went into the dressing-room,
+to assist in the sacred toilette of his illustrious friend.
+
+In the drawing-rooms the company suddenly eddied, the conversation
+ceased, and a throng of people, after crowding in front of one of the
+doors, opened to leave a passage.
+
+The bride, leaning on the arm of a distinguished gentleman, who was the
+best man, entered, clad in white, ivory white her dress, snow white her
+veil, pearl white her flowers. The only bright color she showed was the
+healthy pink of her cheeks and the red of her lips. She smiled to her
+friends, not bashfully nor timidly, but with an air of satisfaction at
+the festivity and the fact that she was its principal object. After her
+came the groom, giving his arm to his new mother, the painter's wife,
+smaller than ever in her party-gown that was too large for her, dazed by
+this noisy event that broke the painful calm of her existence.
+
+And the father? Renovales was missing in the formal entrance; he was
+very busy attending to the guests; a gracious smile, half hidden behind
+a fan, detained him at one end of the drawing-room. He had felt some one
+touch his shoulder and, turning around, he saw the solemn Count of
+Alberca with his wife on his arm. The count had congratulated him on the
+appearance of the studios; all very artistic. The countess had
+congratulated him too, in a jesting tone, on the importance of this
+event in his life. The moment of retiring, of saying good-by to youth
+had come.
+
+"They are shelving you, dear master. Pretty soon they will be calling
+you grandfather."
+
+She laughed with pleasure at the flush of pain these pitying words
+caused him. But before Mariano could answer the countess, he felt
+himself dragged away by Cotoner. What was he doing there? The bride and
+groom were at the altar; Monsignor was beginning the service; the
+father's chair was still vacant. And Renovales passed a tiresome
+half-hour following the ceremonies of the prelate with an absent-minded
+glance. Far away in the last of the studios, the stringed instruments
+struck a loud chord and a melody of earthly mysticism poured forth from
+room to room in the atmosphere laden with the perfume of crumpled roses.
+
+Then a sweet voice, supported by others more harsh, began a prayer that
+had the voluptuous rhythm of an Italian serenade. A passing wave of
+sentimentality seemed to stir the guests. Cotoner, who stood near the
+altar, in case Monsignor should need something, felt moved to tenderness
+by the music, by the sight of that distinguished gathering, by the
+dramatic gravity with which the Roman prelate conducted the ceremonies
+of his profession. Seeing Milita so fair, kneeling, with her eyes
+lowered under her snowy veil, the poor Bohemian blinked to keep back the
+tears. He felt just as if he were marrying his own daughter. He who had
+not had one!
+
+Renovales sat up, seeking the countess's eyes above the white and black
+mantillas. Sometimes he found them resting on him with a mocking
+expression, at other times he saw them seeking Monteverde in the crowd
+of gentlemen that filled the doorway.
+
+There was one moment when the painter paid attention to the ceremony.
+How long it was! The music had ceased; Monsignor, with his back to the
+altar, advanced several steps toward the newly married couple, holding
+out his hands, as if he were going to speak to them. There was a
+profound hush and the voice of the Italian began to sound in the silence
+with a sing-song mellowness, hesitating over some words, supplying them
+with others of his own language. He explained to the man and wife their
+duties and expatiated, with oratorical fire, in his praises of their
+families. He spoke little of him; he was a representative of the upper
+classes, from which rise the leaders of men; he knew his duties. She was
+the descendant of a great painter whose fame was universal, of an
+artist.
+
+As he mentioned art, the Roman prelate was fired with enthusiasm, as if
+he were speaking of his own stock, with the deep interest of a man whose
+life had been spent among the splendid half-pagan decorations of the
+Vatican. "Next to God, there is nothing like art." And after this
+statement, with which he attributed to the bride a nobility superior to
+that of many of the people who were watching her, he eulogized the
+virtues of her parents. In admirable terms, he commended their pure love
+and Christian fidelity, ties with which they approached together,
+Renovales and his wife, the portal of old age and which surely would
+accompany them till death. The painter bowed his head, afraid that he
+would meet Concha's mocking glance. He could hear Josephina's stifled
+sobs, with her face hidden in the lace of her mantilla. Cotoner felt
+called upon to second the prelate's praises with discreet words of
+approval.
+
+Then the orchestra noisily began Mendelssohn's "Wedding March"; the
+chairs ground on the floor as they were pushed back; the ladies rushed
+toward the bride and a buzz of congratulations, shouted over the heads
+of the company, and of noisy efforts to be the first to reach her,
+drowned out the vibration of the strings and the heavy blast of the
+brasses. Monsignor, whose importance disappeared as soon as the ceremony
+was over, made his way with his attendants to the dressing-room, passing
+unnoticed through the throng. The bride smiled with a resigned air amid
+the circle of feminine arms that squeezed her and friendly lips that
+showered kisses on her. She expressed surprise at the simplicity of the
+ceremony. Was that all there was to it? Was she really married?
+
+Cotoner saw Josephina making her way across the room, looking
+impatiently among the shoulders of the guests, her face tinged with a
+hectic flush. His instinct of a master of ceremonies warned him that
+danger was at hand.
+
+"Take my arm, Josephina. Let's go outside for a breath of fresh air.
+This is unbearable."
+
+She took his arm but instead of following him, she dragged him among the
+people who crowded around her daughter until at last, seeing the
+Countess of Alberca, she stopped. Her prudent friend trembled. Just what
+he thought--she was looking for the other woman.
+
+"Josephina, Josephina! Remember that this is Milita's wedding!"
+
+But his advice was useless. Concha, seeing her old friend, ran toward
+her. "Dear! So long since I've seen you! A kiss--another." And she
+kissed her effusively. The little woman made one attempt to resist; but
+then she submitted, dejectedly, smiling sadly, overcome by habit and
+training. She returned her kisses coldly with an indifferent expression.
+She did not hate Concha. If her husband did not go to her, he would go
+to some one else; the real, the dangerous enemy was within him.
+
+The bride and groom, arm in arm, smiling and somewhat fatigued by the
+violent congratulations, passed through the groups of people and
+disappeared, followed by the last chords of the triumphal march.
+
+The music ceased, and the company crowded around the tables covered with
+bottles, cold meats and confections, behind which the servants hurried
+in confusion, not knowing how to serve so many a black glove or white
+hand that seized the gold-bordered plates and the little pearl knives
+crossed on the dishes. It was a smiling, well-bred riot, but they pushed
+and trod on the ladies' trains and used their elbows, as if, now the
+ceremony was over, they were all gnawed with hunger.
+
+Plate in hand, stifled and breathless after the assault, they scattered
+through the studios, eating even on the very altar. There were not
+servants enough for so great a gathering; the young men, seizing bottles
+of champagne, ran in all directions, filling the ladies' glasses. Amid
+great merriment the tables were pillaged. The servants covered them
+hastily and with no less speed the pyramids of sandwiches, fruits, and
+sweets came down and the bottles disappeared. The corks popped two and
+three at a time, in ceaseless crossfire.
+
+Renovales ran about like a servant, loaded with plates and glasses,
+going back and forth from the crowded tables to the corners where some
+of his friends were seated. The Alberca woman assumed the airs of a
+mistress; she made him go and come with constant requests.
+
+On one of these trips he ran into his beloved pupil, Soldevilla. He had
+not seen him for a long time. He looked rather gloomy, but he found some
+consolation in looking at his waistcoat, a novelty that had made a "hit"
+among the younger set; of black velvet with embroidered flowers and gold
+buttons.
+
+The master felt that he ought to console him,--poor boy! For the first
+time he gave him to understand that he was "in the secret."
+
+"I wanted something else for my daughter, but it was impossible. Work,
+Soldevilla! Courage! We must not have any mistress except painting."
+
+And content to have delivered this kindly consolation, he returned to
+the countess.
+
+At noon, the reception ended. Lopez de Sosa and his wife reappeared in
+traveling costume; he in a fox-skin overcoat, in spite of the heat, a
+leather cap and high leggings; she in a long mackintosh that reached to
+her feet and a turban of thick veils that hid her face, like a fugitive
+from a harem.
+
+At the door, the groom's latest acquisition was waiting for them--an
+eighty horse-power car that he had bought for his wedding trip. They
+intended to spend the night some hundred miles away in a corner of old
+Castile, at an estate inherited from his father which he had never
+visited.
+
+A modern wedding, as Cotoner said, a honeymoon at full speed, without
+any witness except the discreet back of the chauffeur. The next day they
+expected to start for a tour of Europe. They would go as far as Berlin;
+perhaps farther.
+
+Lopez de Sosa shook hands with his friends vigorously, like a proud
+explorer, and went out to look over his car, before leaving. Milita
+submitted to her friends' caresses, carrying away her mother's tears on
+her veil.
+
+"Good-by, good-by, my daughter!"
+
+And the wedding was over.
+
+Renovales and his wife were left alone. The absence of their daughter
+seemed to increase the solitude, widening the distance between them.
+They looked at each other hostilely, reserved and gloomy, without a
+sound to break the silence and serve as a bridge to enable them to
+exchange a few words. Their life was going to be like that of convicts,
+who hate each other and walk side by side, bound with the same chain, in
+tormenting union, forced to share the same necessities of life.
+
+As a remedy for this isolation that filled them with misgivings they
+both thought of having the newly married couple come to live with them.
+The house was large, there was room for them all. But Milita objected,
+gently but firmly, and her husband seconded her. He must live near his
+coach house, his garage. Besides, where could he, without shocking his
+father-in-law, put his collection of treasures, his museum of bull's
+heads and bloody suits of famous toreadors, which was the envy of his
+friends and an object of great curiosity for many foreigners.
+
+When the painter and his wife were alone again, it seemed as though they
+had aged many years in a month; they found their house more huge, more
+deserted,--with the echoing silence of abandoned monuments. Renovales
+wanted Cotoner to move to the house, but the Bohemian declined with a
+sort of fear. He would eat with them; he would spend a great part of the
+day at their house; they were all the family he had; but he wanted to
+keep his freedom; he could not give up his numerous friends.
+
+Well along in the summer, the master induced his wife to take her usual
+vacation. They would go to a little known Andalusian watering-place, a
+fishing village where the artist had painted many of his pictures. He
+was tired of Madrid. The Countess of Alberca was at Biarritz with her
+husband. Doctor Monteverde had gone there too, dragged along by her.
+
+They made the trip, but it did not last more than a month. The master
+hardly finished two canvases. Josephina felt ill. When they reached the
+watering-place, her health improved greatly. She appeared more cheerful;
+for hours at a time she would sit in the sand, getting tanned in the
+sun, craving the warmth with the eagerness of an invalid, watching the
+sea with her expressionless eyes, near her husband who painted,
+surrounded by a semicircle of wretched people. She sang, smiled
+sometimes to the master, as if she forgave him everything and wanted to
+forget, but suddenly a shadow of sadness had fallen on her; her body
+seemed paralyzed once more by weakness. She conceived an aversion to the
+bright beach, and the life of the open air, with that repugnance for
+light and noise which sometimes seizes invalids and makes them hide in
+the seclusion of their beds. She sighed for her gloomy house in Madrid.
+There she was better, she felt stronger, surrounded with memories; she
+thought she was safer from the black danger that hovered about her.
+Besides, she longed to see her daughter. Renovales must telegraph to his
+son-in-law. They had toured Europe long enough; it was time for them to
+come back; she must see Milita.
+
+They returned to Madrid at the end of September, and a little later the
+newly married couple joined them, delighted with their trip and still
+more delighted to be at home again. Lopez de Sosa had been greatly vexed
+by meeting people wealthier than he, who humiliated him with their
+luxury. His wife wanted to live among friends who would admire her
+prosperity. She was grieved at the lack of curiosity in those countries
+where no one paid any attention to her.
+
+With the presence of her daughter, Josephina seemed to recover her
+spirits. The latter frequently came in the afternoon, dressed in her
+showy gowns, which were the more striking at that season when most of
+the society folk were away from Madrid, and took her mother to ride in
+the motor in the suburbs of the capital, sweeping along the dusty roads.
+Sometimes, too, Josephina summoning her courage, overcame her bodily
+weakness and went to her daughter's house, a second-story apartment in
+the Calle de Olozaga, admiring the modern comforts that surrounded her.
+
+The master seemed to be bored. He had no portraits to paint; it was
+impossible for him to do anything in Madrid while he was still saturated
+with the radiant sun and the brilliant colors of the Mediterranean
+shore. Besides, he missed the company of Cotoner, who had gone to a
+historic little town in Castile, where with a comic pride he received
+the honors due to genius, living in the palace of the prelate and
+ruining several pictures in the Cathedral by an infamous restoration.
+
+His loneliness made Renovales remember the Alberca woman with all the
+greater longing. She, on her part, with a constant succession of letters
+reminded the painter of her every day. She had written to him while he
+was at the little village on the coast and now she wrote to him in
+Madrid, asking him what he was doing, taking an interest in the most
+insignificant details of his daily life and telling him about her own
+with an exuberance that filled pages and pages, till every envelope
+contained a veritable history.
+
+The painter followed her life minute by minute, as if he were with her.
+She talked to him about Darwin, concealing Monteverde under this name;
+she complained of his coldness, of his indifference, of the air of
+commiseration with which he submitted to her love. "Oh, master, I am
+very unhappy!" At other times her letter was triumphant, optimistic; she
+seemed radiant, and the painter read her satisfaction between the lines;
+he divined her intoxication after those daring meetings in her own
+house, defying the count's blindness. And she told him everything, with
+shameless, maddening familiarity, as if he were a woman, as if he could
+not be moved in the least by her confidences.
+
+In her last letter, Concha seemed mad with joy. The count was at San
+Sebastian, to take leave of the king and queen,--an important diplomatic
+mission. Although he was not "in line," they had chosen him as a
+representative of the most distinguished Spanish nobility to take the
+Fleece to a petty prince of a little German state. The poor gentleman,
+since he could not win the golden distinction, had to be contented with
+taking it to other men with great pomp. Renovales saw the countess's
+hand in all this. Her letters were radiant with joy. She was going to be
+left alone with Darwin, for the noble gentleman would be absent for a
+long time. Married life with the doctor, free from risk and disturbance!
+
+Renovales read these letters merely out of curiosity; they no longer
+awakened in him an intense or lasting interest. He had grown accustomed
+to his situation as a confidant; his desire was cooled by the frankness
+of that woman who put herself in his power, telling him all her secrets.
+Her body was the only thing he did not know; her inner life he possessed
+as did none of her lovers and he began to feel tired of this possession.
+When he finished reading these letters, he would always think the same
+thing. "She is mad. What do I care about her secrets?"
+
+A week passed without any news from Biarritz. The papers spoke of the
+trip of the eminent Count of Alberca. He was already in Germany with all
+his retinue, getting ready to put the noble lambskin around the princely
+shoulders. Renovates smiled knowingly, without emotion, without envy, as
+he thought of the countess's silence. She had a great deal to take up
+her time, no doubt, since she was left alone.
+
+Suddenly one afternoon he heard from her in the most unexpected manner.
+He was going out of his house, just at sunset, to take a walk on the
+heights of the Hippodrome along the Canalillo to view Madrid from the
+hill, when at the gate a messenger boy in a red coat handed him a
+letter. The painter started with surprise on recognizing Concha's
+handwriting. Four hasty, excited lines. She had just arrived that
+afternoon on the French express with her maid, Marie. She was alone at
+home. "Come, hurry. Serious news. I am dying." And the master hurried,
+though the announcement of her death did not make much impression on
+him. It was probably some trifle. He was used to the countess's
+exaggeration.
+
+The spacious house of the Albercas was dark, dusty and echoing like all
+deserted buildings. The only servant who remained was the concierge. His
+children were playing beside the steps as if they did not know that the
+lady of the house had returned. Upstairs the furniture was wrapped in
+gray covers, the chandeliers were veiled with cheese-cloth, the house
+and glass of the mirrors were dull and lifeless under the coating of
+dust. Marie opened the door for him and led the way through the dark,
+musty rooms, the windows closed, and the curtains down, without any
+light except what came through the cracks.
+
+In the reception hall he ran into several trunks, still unpacked,
+dropped and forgotten in the haste of arrival.
+
+At the end of this pilgrimage, almost feeling his way through the
+deserted house, he saw a spot of light, the door of the countess's
+bedroom, the only room that was alive, lighted up by the glow of the
+setting sun. Concha was there beside the window, buried in a chair, her
+brow contracted, her glance lost in the distance, her face tinged with
+the orange of the dying light.
+
+Seeing the painter she sprang to her feet, stretched out her arms and
+ran toward him, as if she were fleeing from pursuit.
+
+"Mariano! Master! He has gone! He has left me forever!"
+
+Her voice was a wail; she threw her arms around him, burying her face in
+his shoulder, wetting his beard with the tears that began to fall from
+her eyes drop by drop.
+
+Renovales, under the impulse of his surprise, repelled her gently and he
+made her go back to her chair.
+
+"Who has gone away? Who is it? Darwin?"
+
+Yes; he. It was all over. The countess could hardly talk; a painful sob
+interrupted her words. She was enraged to see herself deserted and her
+pride trampled on; her whole body trembled. He had fled at the height of
+their happiness, when she thought that she was surest of him, when they
+enjoyed a liberty they had never known. He was tired of her; he still
+loved her,--as he said in a letter,--but he wanted to be free to
+continue his studies. He was grateful to her for her kindness, surfeited
+with so much love, and he fled to go into seclusion abroad and become a
+great man, not thinking any more about women. This was the purpose of
+the brief lines he had sent her on his disappearance. A lie, an absolute
+lie! She saw something else. The wretch had run away with a cocotte who
+was the cynosure of all eyes on the beach at Biarritz. An ugly thing,
+who had some vulgar charm about her, for all the men raved over her.
+That young "sport" was tired of respectable people. He probably was
+offended because she had not secured him the professorship, because he
+had not been made a deputy. Heavens! How was she to blame for her
+failure? Had she not done everything she could?
+
+"Oh, Mariano. I know I am going to die. This is not love; I no longer
+care for him. I detest him! It is rage, indignation. I would like to get
+hold of the little whipper-snapper, to choke him. Think of all the
+foolish things I have done for him. Heavens! Where were my eyes!"
+
+As soon as she discovered that she had been deserted, her only thought
+was to find her good friend, her counselor, her "brother," to go to
+Madrid, to see Renovales and tell him everything, everything! impelled
+by the necessity of confessing to him even secrets whose memory made her
+blush.
+
+She had no one in the world who loved her disinterestedly, no one except
+the master, and with the panicky haste of a traveler who is lost at
+night, in the midst of a desert, she had run to him, seeking warmth and
+protection.
+
+This longing for protection came back to her in the master's presence.
+She went to him again, clinging to him, sobbing in hysteric fear, as if
+she were surrounded by dangers.
+
+"Master, you are all I have; you are my life! You won't ever leave me,
+will you? You will always be my brother?"
+
+Renovales, bewildered at the unexpectedness of this scene, at the
+submission of that woman who had always repelled him and now suddenly
+clung to him, unable to stand unless her arms were clasped about his
+neck, tried to free himself from her arms.
+
+After the first surprise, the old coldness came over him. He was
+irritated at this proud despair that was another's work.
+
+The woman he had longed for, the woman of his dreams came to him, seemed
+to give herself to him with hysteric sobs, eager to overwhelm him,
+perhaps without realizing what she was doing in the thoughtlessness of
+her abnormal state; but he pushed her back, with sudden terror,
+hesitating and timid in the face of the deed, pained that the
+realization of his dreams came, not voluntarily but under the influence
+of disappointment and desertion.
+
+Concha pressed close to him, eager to feel the protection of his
+powerful body.
+
+"Master! My friend! You won't leave me! You are so good!"
+
+And closing her eyes that no longer wept, she kissed his strong neck,
+and looked up with her eyes still moist, seeking his face in the shadow.
+They could hardly see each other; the room was dim with mysterious
+twilight,--all its objects indistinct as in a dream, the dangerous hour
+that had attracted them for the first time in the seclusion of the
+studio.
+
+Suddenly she drew away in terror, fleeing from him, taking refuge in the
+gloom, pursued by his eager hands.
+
+"No, not that. We'll be sorry for it! Friends! Nothing more than friends
+and always!"
+
+Her voice, as she said this, was sincere, but weak, faint, the voice of
+a victim who resists and has not the strength to defend himself.
+
+When the painter awakened it was night. The light from the street lamps
+shone through the window with a distant, reddish glow.
+
+He shivered with a sensation of cold, as if he were emerging from under
+an enticing wave where he had lain, he could not remember how long. He
+felt weak, humiliated, with the anxiety of a child who has done
+something wrong.
+
+Concha was sobbing. What folly! It had been against her will; she knew
+they would be sorry for it. But she was the first to recover her
+calmness. Her outline rose on the bright background of the window. She
+called the painter who stood in the shadow, ashamed.
+
+"After all, there was no escape," she said firmly. "It was a dangerous
+game and it could not end in any other way. Now I know that I cared for
+you; that you are the only man for whom I can care."
+
+Renovales was beside her. Their two forms made a single outline on the
+bright background of the window, in a supreme embrace as though they
+desired to take refuge in each other.
+
+Her hands gently parted the heavy locks that hid the master's forehead.
+She gazed at him rapturously. Then she kissed his lips with an endless
+caress, whispering:
+
+"Mariano, dear. I love you, I worship you. I will be your slave. Don't
+ever leave me. I will seek you on my knees. You don't know how I will
+care for you. You shall not escape me. You wanted it,--you ugly darling,
+you big giant, my love."
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+One afternoon at the end of October, Renovales noticed that his friend
+Cotoner was rather worried.
+
+The master was jesting with him, making him tell about his labors as
+restorer of paintings in the old church. He had come back fatter and
+merrier, with a greasy, priestly luster. According to Renovales he had
+brought back all the health of the clerics. The bishop's table with its
+succulent abundance was a sweet memory for Cotoner. He extolled it and
+described it, praising those good gentlemen who, like himself, lived
+free from passion with no other voluptuousness in life than a refined
+appetite. The master laughed at the thought of the simplicity of those
+priests who in the afternoon, after the choir, formed a group around
+Cotoner's scaffold, following the movements of his hands with wondering
+eyes; at the respect of the attendants and other servants of the
+episcopal palace, hanging on Don Jose's words, astonished to find such
+modesty in an artist who was a friend of cardinals and had studied in
+Rome.
+
+When the master saw him so serious and silent that afternoon after
+luncheon he wanted to know what was worrying him. Had they complained of
+his restoration? Was his money gone? Cotoner shook his head. It was not
+his affairs; he was worrying over Josephina's condition. Had he not
+noticed her?
+
+Renovales shrugged his shoulders. It was the usual trouble:
+neurasthenia, diabetes, all those chronic ailments of which she did not
+want to be cured, refusing to obey the physicians. She was thinner, but
+her nerves seemed calmer; she cried less; she maintained a sad silence,
+simply wanting to be alone and stay in a corner, staring into space.
+
+Cotoner shook his head again. Renovales' optimism was not to be wondered
+at.
+
+"You are leading a strange life, Mariano. Since I came back from my
+trip, you are a different man; I wouldn't know you. Once, you could not
+live without painting and now you spend weeks at a time without taking
+up a brush. You smoke, sing, walk up and down the studio and all at once
+rush off, out of the house and go--well. I know where, and perhaps your
+wife suspects it. You seem to be having a good time, master. The deuce
+take the rest! But, man alive, come down from the clouds. See what is
+around you; have some charity."
+
+And good Cotoner complained bitterly of the life the master was
+leading--disturbed by sudden impatience and hasty departures, from which
+he returned absent-minded, with a faint smile on his lips and a vague
+look in his eyes, as if he still relished the feast of memories he
+carried in his mind.
+
+The old painter seemed alarmed at Josephina's increasing delicacy, acute
+consumption that still found matter to destroy in her organism wasted by
+years of illness. The poor little woman coughed constantly and this
+cough, that was not dry but prolonged and violent, alarmed Cotoner.
+
+"The doctors ought to see her again."
+
+"The doctors!" exclaimed Renovales, "What's the use? A whole medical
+faculty has been here and to no avail. She doesn't mind them; she
+refuses everything, perhaps to annoy me, to oppose me. There's no
+danger; you don't know her. Weak and small as she is, she will outlive
+you and me."
+
+His voice shook with wrath, as if he could not stand the atmosphere of
+that house where the only distractions he found were the pleasant
+memories that took him away from it.
+
+Cotoner's insistence finally forced him to call a doctor who was a
+friend of his.
+
+Josephina was provoked, divining the cause of their anxiety. She felt
+strong. It was nothing but a cold; the coming of winter. And in her
+glances at the artist there was reproach and insult for his attention
+which she regarded as hypocrisy.
+
+When the doctor and the painter returned to the studio after the
+examination of the patient and stood face to face, the former hesitated
+as if he was afraid to formulate his ideas. He could not say anything
+with certainty; it was easy to make a mistake in regard to that weak
+system that maintained itself only by its extraordinary reserve power.
+Then he had recourse to the usual evasive measure of his profession. He
+advised him to take her away from Madrid, a change of air,--a change of
+life.
+
+Renovales objected. Where could she go, now that winter was beginning,
+when at the height of summer she had wanted to come home? The doctor
+shrugged his shoulders and wrote out a prescription, revealing in his
+expression the desire to write something, not to go away without leaving
+a piece of paper as a trace. He explained various symptoms to the
+husband in order that he might observe them in the patient and he went
+away shrugging his shoulders again with a gesture that revealed
+indecision and dejection.
+
+Pshaw! Who knows? Perhaps! The system sometimes has unexpected
+reactions, wonderful reserve power to resist disease.
+
+This enigmatic consolation alarmed Renovales. He spied on his wife,
+studying her cough, watching her closely when she did not see him. They
+no longer spent the night together. Since Milita's marriage, the father
+occupied her room. They had broken the slavery of the common bed that
+tormented their rest. Renovales made up for this departure by going into
+Josephina's chamber every morning.
+
+"Did you have a good night? Do you want something?"
+
+His wife's eyes greeted him with hostility.
+
+"Nothing."
+
+And she accompanied this brief statement by turning over in the bed,
+disdainfully, with her back to the master.
+
+The painter received these evidences of hostility with quiet
+resignation. It was his duty; perhaps she might die! But this
+possibility of death did not stir him; it left him cold and he was angry
+at himself, as if two distinct personalities existed within him. He
+reproached himself for his cruelty, his icy indifference before the
+invalid who now produced in him only a passing remorse.
+
+One afternoon at the Alberca woman's house, after one of their daring
+meetings with which they defied the holy calm of the noble, who had now
+returned from his trip, the painter spoke timidly of his wife.
+
+"I shall have to come less; don't be surprised. Josephina is very ill."
+
+"Very?" asked Concha.
+
+And in the flash of her glance, Renovales thought he saw something
+familiar, a blue gleam that had danced before him in the darkness of the
+night with infernal glow, troubling his conscience.
+
+"No, maybe it isn't anything. I don't believe there is any danger."
+
+He felt forced to lie. It consoled him to discount her illness. He felt
+that, by this voluntary deceit, he was relieving himself of the anxiety
+that goaded him. It was the lie of the man who justifies himself by
+pretending not to know the depth of the harm he has caused.
+
+"It isn't anything," he said to his daughter, who, greatly alarmed at
+her mother's appearance, came to spend every night with her. "Just a
+cold. It will disappear as soon as good weather comes."
+
+He had a fire in every fireplace in the house; the rooms were as hot as
+a furnace. He declared loudly, without any show of excitement, that his
+wife was merely suffering from a slight cold, and as he spoke with such
+assurance, a strange voice seemed to cry within him: "You lie, she is
+dying; she is dying and you know it."
+
+The symptoms of which the doctor had spoken began to appear with ominous
+regularity in fatal succession. At first he noticed only a constant high
+fever that seemed to grow worse with severe chills at the end of the
+afternoon. Then he observed sweats that were terrifying in their
+frequency--sweats at night that left the print of her body on the
+sheets. And that poor body, which grew more fragile, more like a
+skeleton, as if the fire of the fever were devouring the last particle
+of fat and muscle, was left without any other covering and protection
+than the skin, and that too seemed to be melting away. She coughed
+frequently; at all hours of the day and night her painful hacking
+disturbed the silence of the house. She complained of a continual pain
+in the lower part of her chest. Her daughter made her eat by dint of
+coaxing, lifting the spoon to her mouth, as if she were a child. But
+coughing and nausea made nutrition impossible. Her tongue was dry; she
+complained of an infernal thirst that was devouring her.
+
+Thus passed a month. Renovales, in his optimistic mood, strove to
+believe that her illness would not last long.
+
+"She is not dying, Pepe," he would say in a convinced tone, as if he
+were disposed to quarrel with anyone who opposed this statement. "She is
+not dying, doctor. You don't think she is, do you?"
+
+The doctor would answer with his everlasting shrug. "Perhaps,--it's
+possible." And as the patient refused to submit to an internal
+examination, he was forced to inquire of the daughter and husband about
+the symptoms.
+
+In spite of her extreme emaciation, some parts of her body seemed to be
+undergoing an abnormal swelling. Renovales questioned the doctor
+frankly. What did he think of these symptoms? And the doctor bowed his
+head. He did not know. They must wait: Nature has surprises. But
+afterward, with sudden decision, he pretended that he wanted to write a
+prescription, in order that he might talk with the husband alone in his
+working studio.
+
+"To tell you the truth, Renovales, this pitiful comedy is getting
+tiresome. It may be all right for the others but you are a man. It is
+acute consumption; perhaps a matter of days, perhaps a matter of a few
+months; but she is dying and I know no remedy. If you want to, get some
+one else."
+
+"She is dying!" Renovales was dazed with surprise as if the possibility
+of this outcome had never occurred to him. "She is dying!" And when the
+doctor had gone away, with a firmer step than usual, as if he had freed
+himself of a weight, the painter repeated the words to himself, without
+their producing any other effect than leaving him abstracted in
+senseless stupidity. She is dying! But was it really possible that that
+little woman could die, who had so weighed on his life and whose
+weakness filled him with fear?
+
+Suddenly he found himself walking up and down the studio, repeating
+aloud,
+
+"She is dying! She is dying!"
+
+He said it to himself in order that he might make himself feel sorry,
+and break out into sobs of grief, but he remained mute.
+
+Josephina was going to die--and he was calm. He wanted to weep; it
+seemed to him a duty. He blinked, swelling out his chest, holding his
+breath, trying to take in the whole meaning of his sorrow; but his eyes
+remained dry; his lungs breathed the air with pleasure; his thoughts,
+hard and refractory, did not shudder with any painful image. It was an
+exterior grief that found expression only in words, gestures and excited
+walking, his interior continued its old stolidness, as if the certainty
+of that death had congealed it in peaceful indifference.
+
+The shame of his villainy tormented him. The same instinct that forces
+ascetics to submit themselves to mortal punishments for their imaginary
+sins dragged him with the power of remorse to the sick chamber. He would
+not leave the room; he would face her scornful silence; he would stay
+with her till the end, forgetting sleep and hunger. He felt that he must
+purify himself by some noble, generous sacrifice from this blindness of
+soul that now was terrifying.
+
+Milita no longer spent the nights caring for her mother and would go
+home, somewhat to the discomfiture of her husband, who had been rather
+pleased at this unexpected return to a bachelor's life.
+
+Renovales did not sleep. After midnight when Cotoner went away he walked
+in silence through the brilliantly lighted rooms; he prowled around the
+chamber--entered it to see Josephina in bed, sweating, shaken from time
+to time by a fit of coughing or in a deathlike lethargy, so thin and
+small that the bed-clothes hardly showed the childlike outline of her
+body. Then the master passed the rest of the night in an armchair,
+smoking, his eyes staring but his brain drowsy with sleep.
+
+His thoughts were far away. There was no use in feeling ashamed of his
+cruelty; he seemed bewitched by a mysterious power that was superior to
+his remorse. He forgot the sick woman; he wondered what Concha was doing
+at that time; he saw her in fancy; he remembered her words, her
+caresses; he thought of their nights of abandon. And when, with a
+violent effort, he threw off these dreams, in expiation he would go to
+the door of the sick chamber and listen to her labored breathing,
+putting on a gloomy face, but unable to weep or feel the sadness he
+longed to feel.
+
+After two months of illness, Josephina could no longer stay in bed. Her
+daughter would lift her out of it without any effort as if she were a
+feather, and she would sit in a chair,--small, insignificant,
+unrecognizable, her face so emaciated that its only features seemed to
+be the deep hollows of her eyes and her nose, sharp as the edge of a
+knife.
+
+Cotoner could hardly keep back the tears when he saw her.
+
+"There isn't anything left of her!" he would say as he went away. "No
+one would know her!"
+
+Her harrowing cough scattered a deathly poison about her. White foam
+came to her lips where it seemed to harden in the corners. Her eyes grew
+larger, they took on a strange glow as if they saw through persons and
+things. Oh, those eyes! What a shudder of terror they awakened in
+Renovales!
+
+One afternoon they fell on him, with the intense, searching glance that
+had always terrified him. They were eyes that pierced his forehead, that
+laid bare his thoughts.
+
+They were alone; Milita had gone home; Cotoner was sleeping in a chair
+in the studio. The sick woman seemed more animated, eager to talk,
+looking on her husband with a sort of pity as he sat beside her, almost
+at her feet.
+
+She was going to die; she was certain of death. And a last revolt of
+life that recoils from the end, the horror of the unknown, made the
+tears rise to her eyes.
+
+Renovales protested violently, trying to conceal his deceit by his
+shouts. Die? She must not think of that! She would live; she still had
+before her many years of happy existence.
+
+She smiled as if she pitied him. She could not be deceived; her eyes
+penetrated farther than his; she divined the impalpable, the invisible
+that hovered about her. She spoke weakly but with that inexplicable
+solemnity that is characteristic of a voice that emits its last sounds,
+of a soul that unbosoms itself for the last time.
+
+"I shall die, Mariano, sooner than you think, later than I desire. I
+shall die and you will be free."
+
+He! He desire her death! His surprise and remorse made him jump to his
+feet, wave his arms in angry protest, writhe, as if a pair of invisible
+hands had just laid him bare with a rude wrench.
+
+"Josephina, don't rave. Calm yourself. For God's sake don't talk such
+nonsense!"
+
+She smiled with a painful, horrible expression, but immediately her poor
+face became beautiful with the serenity of one who is departing this
+life without hallucinations or delirium, in perfect mental poise. She
+spoke to him with the immense sympathy, the superhuman compassion of one
+who contemplates the wretched stream of life, departing from its
+current, already touching with her feet the shores of eternal shadow, of
+eternal peace.
+
+"I should not want to go away without telling you. I die knowing
+everything. Do not move; do not protest. You know the power I have over
+you. More than once I have seen you watching me in terror, so easily do
+I read your thoughts. For years I have been convinced that all was over
+between us. We have lived like good creatures of God--eating together,
+sleeping together, helping each other in our needs. But I peered within
+you; I looked at your heart. Nothing! Not a memory, not a spark of love.
+I have been your woman, the good companion who cares for the house, and
+relieves a man of the petty cares of life. You have worked hard to
+surround me with comforts, in order that I might be contented and not
+disturb you. But Love? Never. Many people live as we have--many of them;
+almost all. I could not; I thought that life was something different and
+I am not sorry to go away. Don't go into a rage; don't shout. You aren't
+to blame, poor Mariano--It was a mistake for us to marry."
+
+She excused him gently with a kindness that seemed not of this world,
+generously passing over the cruelty and selfishness of a life she was
+about to leave. Men like him were exceptional; they ought to live alone,
+by themselves, like those great trees that absorb all the life from the
+ground and do not allow a single plant to grow in the space which their
+roots reach. She was not strong enough to stand isolation; in order to
+live she must have the shadow of tenderness, the certainty of being
+loved. She ought to have married a man like other men; a simple being
+like herself, whose only longings were modest and commonplace. The
+painter had dragged her into his extraordinary path out of the easy,
+well-beaten roads that the rest follow and she was falling by the
+wayside, old in the prime of her youth, broken because she had gone with
+him in this journey which was beyond her strength.
+
+Renovales was walking about with ceaseless protests.
+
+"Why, what nonsense you are talking! You are raving! I have always loved
+you, Josephina. I love you now."
+
+Her eyes suddenly became hard. A flash of anger crossed their pupils.
+
+"Stop; don't lie. I know of a pile of letters that you have in your
+studio, hidden behind the books in your library. I have read them one by
+one. I have been following them as they came; I discovered your hiding
+place when you had only three of them. You know that I see through you;
+that I have a power over you, that you can hide nothing from me. I know
+your love affairs."
+
+Renovales felt his ears buzzing, the floor slipping from under his feet.
+What astounding witchcraft! Even the letters so carefully hidden had
+been discovered by that woman's divining instinct!
+
+"It's a lie!" he cried vehemently to conceal his agitation. "It isn't
+love! If you have read them, you know what it is as well as I; just
+friendship; the letters of a friend who is somewhat crazy."
+
+The sick woman smiled sadly. At first it was friendship--even less than
+that, the perverse amusement of a flighty woman who liked to play with a
+celebrated man, exciting in him the enthusiasm of youth. She knew her
+childhood companion; she was sure it would not go any farther; and so
+she pitied the poor man in the midst of his mad love. But afterward
+something extraordinary had certainly happened; something that she could
+not explain and which had upset all of her calculations. Now her husband
+and Concha were lovers.
+
+"Do not deny it; it is useless. It is this certainty that is killing me.
+I realized it when I saw you distracted, with a happy smile as if you
+were relishing your thoughts. I realized it in the merry songs you sang
+when you awoke in the morning, in the perfume with which you were
+impregnated and which followed you everywhere. I did not need to find
+any more letters. The odor around you, that perfume of infidelity, of
+sin, which always accompanied you, was enough. You, poor man, came home
+thinking that everything was left outside the door, and that odor
+follows you, denounces you; I think I can still perceive it."
+
+And her nostrils dilated, as she breathed with a pained expression,
+closing her eyes as though she wished to escape the images which that
+perfume called up in her. Her husband persisted in his denials, now that
+he was convinced that she had no other proof of his infidelity. A lie!
+An hallucination!
+
+"No, Mariano," murmured the sick woman. "She is within you; she fills
+your head; from here I can see her. Once a thousand mad fancies occupied
+her place,--illusions of your taste, naked women, a wantonness that was
+your religion. Now it is she who fills it. It is your desire incarnated.
+Go on and be happy. I am going away--there is no place for me in the
+world."
+
+She was silent for a moment and the tears came to her eyes again at the
+memory of the first years of their life together.
+
+"No one has cared for you as I have, Mariano," she said with tender
+regret. "I look on you now as a stranger, without affection and without
+hate. And still, there was never a woman who loved her husband so
+passionately."
+
+"I worship you. Josephina, I love you just as I did when we first met
+each other. Do you remember?"
+
+But in spite of the emotion he pretended to show, his voice had a false
+ring.
+
+"Don't try to bluff, Mariano; it is useless; everything is over. You do
+not care for me nor have I either any of the old feeling."
+
+In her face there was an expression of wonder, of surprise; she seemed
+terror-stricken at her own calmness that made her forgive thus
+indifferently the man who had caused her so much suffering. In her
+fancy, she saw a wide garden, flowers that seemed immortal and they were
+withering and falling with the advent of winter. Then her thoughts went
+beyond, over the chill of death. The snow was melting; the sun was
+shining once more; the new spring was coming with its court of love and
+the dry branches were growing green once more with another life.
+
+"Who knows!" murmured the sick woman with her eyes closed. "Perhaps,
+after I am dead, you will remember me. Perhaps you will care for me
+then, and be grateful to one who loved you so. We want a thing when it
+is lost."
+
+The invalid was silent, exhausted by such an effort; she relapsed into
+that lethargy which for her took the place of rest. Renovales, after
+this conversation, felt his vile inferiority beside his wife. She knew
+everything and forgave him. She had followed the course of his love,
+letter by letter, look by look, seeing in his smiles the memory of his
+faithlessness. And she was silent! She was dying without a protest! And
+he did not fall at her feet to beg her forgiveness! And he remained
+unmoved, without a tear, without a sigh!
+
+He was afraid to stay alone with her. Milita came back to stay at the
+house to care for her mother. The master took refuge in his studio; he
+wanted to forget in work the body that was dying under the same roof.
+
+But in vain he poured colors on his palette and took up brushes and
+prepared canvases. He did nothing but daub; he could make no progress,
+as if he had forgotten his art. He kept turning his head anxiously,
+thinking that Josephina was going to enter suddenly, to continue that
+interview in which she had laid bare the greatness of her soul and the
+baseness of his own. He felt forced to return to her apartments, to go
+on tiptoe to the door of the chamber, in order to be sure that she was
+there.
+
+Her emaciation was frightful; it had no limits. When it seemed that it
+must stop, it still surprised them with new shrinking, as if after the
+disappearance of her flesh, her poor skeleton was melting away.
+
+Sometimes she was tormented with delirium, and her daughter, holding
+back her tears, approved of the extravagant trips she planned, of her
+proposals to go far away to live with Milita in a garden, where they
+would find no men; where there were no painters--no painters.
+
+She lived about two weeks. Renovales, with cruel selfishness, was
+anxious to rest, complaining of this abnormal existence. If she must
+die, why did she not end it as soon as possible, and restore the whole
+house to tranquillity!
+
+The end came one afternoon when the master, lying on a couch in his
+studio, was re-reading the tender complaints of a scented little letter.
+So long since she had seen him! How was the patient getting on? She knew
+that his duty was there; people would talk if he came to see her. But
+this separation was hard!
+
+He did not have a chance to finish it. Milita came into the studio, in
+her eyes that expression of horror and fright, which the presence of
+death, the touch of his passage, always inspires, even if his arrival
+has been expected.
+
+Her voice came breathlessly, broken. Mamma was talking with her; she was
+amusing her with the hope of a trip in the near future,--and all at once
+a hoarse sound,--her head bent forward before it fell onto her
+shoulder--a moment--nothing--just like a little bird.
+
+Renovales ran to the bedroom, bumping into his friend Cotoner who came
+out of the dining-room, running too. They saw her in an armchair,
+shrunken, wilted, in the deathly abandon that converts the body into a
+limp mass. All was over.
+
+Milita had to catch her father, to hold him up. She had to be the one
+who kept her calmness and energy at the critical moment. Renovales let
+his daughter lead him; he rested his face on her shoulder, with sublime,
+dramatic grief, with beautiful, artistic despair, still holding
+absent-mindedly in his hand the letter of the countess.
+
+"Courage, Mariano," said poor Cotoner, his voice choked with tears. "We
+must be men. Milita, take your father to the studio. Don't let him see
+her."
+
+The master let his daughter guide him, sighing deeply, trying in vain to
+weep. The tears would not come. He could not concentrate his attention;
+a voice within him was distracting him,--the voice of temptation.
+
+She was dead and he was free. He would go on his way, light-hearted,
+master of himself, relieved of troublesome hindrances. Before him lay
+life with all its joys, love without a fear or a scruple; glory with its
+sweet returns.
+
+Life was going to begin again.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+Until the beginning of the following winter Renovales did not return to
+Madrid. The death of his wife had left him stunned, as if he doubted its
+reality, as if he felt strange at finding himself alone and master of
+his actions. Cotoner, seeing that he had no ambition for work and would
+lie on the couch in the studio with a blank expression on his face, as
+if he were in a waking dream, interpreted his condition as a deep,
+silent grief. Besides, it irritated him that as soon as Josephina was
+dead, the countess began to come to the house frequently to see the
+master and her dear Milita.
+
+"You ought to go away,"--the old artist advised. "You are free; you will
+be just as well off anywhere as here. What you need is a long journey;
+that will take your mind off your trouble."
+
+And Renovales started on his journey with the eagerness of a school-boy,
+free for the first time from the vigilance of a family. Alone, rich,
+master of his actions, he believed that he was the happiest being on
+earth. His daughter had her husband, a family of her own; he saw himself
+in welcome seclusion, without cares or duties, without any other ties
+than the constant letters of Concha, which met him on his travels. Oh,
+happy freedom!
+
+He lived in Holland, studying its museums, which he had never seen:
+then, with the caprice of a wandering bird, he went down to Italy where
+he enjoyed several months of easy life, without any work, visiting
+studios, receiving the honors due a famous master, in the same places
+where once he had struggled, poor and unknown. Then he moved to Paris,
+finally attracted by the countess, who was spending the summer at
+Biarritz with her husband.
+
+Concha's epistolary style grew more urgent. She had numerous objections
+to a prolongation of the period of their separation. He must come back;
+he had traveled enough. She could not stand it without seeing him; she
+loved him; she could not live without him. Besides, as a last resource,
+she spoke to him of her husband, the count, who, in his eternal
+blindness, joined in his wife's requests asking her to invite the artist
+to spend a while at their house in Biarritz. The poor painter must be
+very sad in his bereavement and the kindly nobleman insisted on
+consoling him in his loneliness. In his house, they would divert him;
+they would be a new family for him.
+
+The painter lived for a great part of the summer and all the autumn in
+the welcome atmosphere of that home which seemed created for him. The
+servants respected him, seeing in him the true master. The countess,
+delirious after his long absence, was so reckless that the artist had to
+restrain her, urging her to be prudent. The noble Count of Alberca was
+unceasing in his sympathy. Poor friend! Deprived of his companion! And
+by his expression he shared the horror he felt at the possibility of
+being left a widower, without that wife who made him so happy.
+
+At the beginning of winter Renovales returned to his house. He did not
+experience the slightest emotion on entering the three great studios, on
+passing through those rooms, which seemed more icy, larger, more hollow,
+now that they were stirred by no other steps than his own. He could not
+believe that a year had passed. All was the same as if he had been
+absent for only a few days. Cotoner had taken good care of the house,
+setting to work the concierge and his wife and the old servant who had
+charge of cleaning the studios,--the only servants that Renovales had
+kept. There was no dust, none of the close atmosphere of a house that
+has long been closed. Everything appeared bright and clean, as if life
+had not been interrupted in that house. The sun and air had been pouring
+in the windows, driving out that atmosphere of sickness which Renovales
+had left when he went away and in which he fancied he could feel the
+trace of the invisible garb of death.
+
+It was a new house, like the one he had known before in form, but as
+fresh as a recently constructed building.
+
+Outside of his studio nothing reminded him of his dead wife. He avoided
+going into her chamber; he did not even ask who had the key. He slept in
+the room that had formerly been his daughter's in a small, iron bed,
+delighted to lead a modest, sober life in that princely mansion.
+
+He took breakfast in the dining room at one end of the table, on a
+napkin, oppressed by the size and luxury of the room which now seemed
+vast and useless. He looked at the chair beside the fireplace, where the
+dead woman had often sat. That chair with its open arms seemed to be
+waiting for her trembling, bird-like little body. But the painter did
+not feel any emotion. He could not even remember Josephina's face
+exactly. She had changed so much! The last, that skeleton-like mask, was
+the one he recalled the best, but he thrust it aside, with the
+selfishness of a strong, happy man, who does not want to sadden his life
+with unpleasant memories.
+
+He did not see her picture anywhere in the house. She seemed to have
+evaporated forever without leaving the least trace of her body on the
+walls that had so often supported her tottering steps, on the stairways
+that hardly felt the weight of her feet. Nothing; she was quite
+forgotten. Within Renovales, the only trace of the long years of their
+union that remained was an unpleasant feeling, an annoying memory that
+made him relish all the more his new existence.
+
+His first days in the solitude of the house brought new, intense joys.
+After luncheon he would lie down on the couch in the studio, watching
+the blue spirals of cigar smoke. Complete liberty! Alone in the world!
+Life wholly to himself, without any care or fear. He could go and come
+without a pair of eyes spying on his actions, without being reproached
+with bitter words. That little door of the studio, which he used to
+watch in terror, no longer opened, to let in his enemy. He could close
+it, shutting out the world; he could open it and summon in a noisy,
+scandalous stream, all that he fancied--hosts of naked beauties, to
+paint in a wild bacchanalian rout, strange, black-eyed Oriental girls to
+dance in morbid abandon on the rugs of the studio, all the disordered
+illusions of his desire--the monstrous feasts of fancy which he had
+dreamed of in his days of servitude. He was not sure where he could find
+all this, he was not very eager to look for it. But the consciousness
+that he could realize it without any obstacle was enough.
+
+This consciousness of his absolute freedom, instead of urging him into
+action, kept him in a state of calm, satisfied that he could do
+everything, without the least desire to try anything. Formerly he used
+to rage, complaining of his fetters. What things he would do if he were
+free! What scandals he would cause with his daring! Oh, if he only were
+not married to a slave of convention who tried to apply rules to his art
+with the same formality which she had for her calls and her household
+expenses!
+
+And now that the slave of convention was gone, the artist remained in
+sleepy comfort, looking like a timid lover, at the canvases he had begun
+a year before, at his neglected palette, saying with false energy, "This
+is the last day. To-morrow I will begin."
+
+And the next day, noon came, and with it luncheon, before Renovales had
+taken up a brush. He read foreign papers, magazines on art, looking up,
+with professional interest, what the famous painters of Europe were
+exhibiting or working on. He received a call from some of his humble
+companions, and in their presence he lamented the insolence of the
+younger generation, their disrespectful attacks, with the surliness of a
+famous artist who is getting old and thinks that talent has died out
+with him and that no one can take his place. Then the drowsiness of
+digestion seized him, as it did Cotoner, and he submitted to the bliss
+of short naps, the happiness of doing nothing. His daughter--all the
+family he had--would receive more than she expected at his death. He had
+worked enough. Painting, like all the arts, was a pretty deceit, for the
+advancement of which men strove as if they were mad, until they hated it
+like death. What folly! It was better to keep calm, enjoying your own
+life, intoxicated with the simple animal joys, living for life's sake.
+What good were a few more pictures in those huge palaces filled with
+canvases, disfigured by the centuries, in which hardly a single stroke
+was left as the author had made it? What good did it do the human race,
+which changes its dwelling place every dozen centuries and has seen the
+proud works of man, built of marble or granite, fall in ruins,--if a
+certain Renovales produced a few beautiful toys of cloth and colors,
+which a cigar stub could destroy, or a puff of wind, a drop of water
+leaking through the wall, might ruin in a few years?
+
+But this pessimistic attitude disappeared when some one called him
+"Illustrious Master," or when he saw his name in a paper, and a pupil or
+admirer manifested an interest in his work.
+
+At present he was resting. He had not yet recovered from the shock. Poor
+Josephina! But he was going to work a great deal; he felt a new strength
+for works greater than any that he had thus far produced. And after
+these exclamations, he would be seized with a mad desire for work and
+would enumerate the pictures he had in mind, dwelling upon their
+originality. They were bold problems in color, new technical methods
+that had occurred to him. But these plans never passed the limits of
+speech, they never reached the brush. The springs of his will, once
+vibrant and vigorous, seemed broken or rusted. He did not suffer, he did
+not desire. Death had taken away his fever for work, his artistic
+restlessness, leaving him in the limbo of comfort and tranquillity.
+
+In the afternoon, when he succeeded in throwing off his comfortable
+torpor, he went to see his daughter, if she was in Madrid, for she very
+frequently went with her husband on his automobile trips. Then he ended
+the afternoon at the Albercas', where he often stayed till midnight.
+
+He dined there almost every day. The count, accustomed to his society,
+seemed as eager to see him as his wife. He spoke enthusiastically of the
+portrait which Renovales was painting of him to go with Concha's. He
+would make more progress when he secured some insignia of foreign orders
+that were still lacking in his catalogue of honors. And the artist felt
+a twinge of remorse as he listened to the good gentleman's simplicity,
+while his wife, with mad recklessness, caressed him with her eyes,
+leaned toward him as if she were on the point of falling into his arms.
+
+Then, as soon as the husband went away, she would throw her arms about
+him, hungry for him, defying the curiosity of the servants. Love that
+was threatened with dangers seemed sweeter to her. And the artist took
+pride in letting her worship him. He, who at first was the one who
+implored and pursued, assumed now an air of passive superiority,
+accepting Concha's homage.
+
+Lacking enthusiasm for work, in order to keep up his reputation
+Renovales took refuge in the official honors which are granted to
+respected masters. He put off till the next day the new work, the great
+work that was to call forth new cries of admiration over his name. He
+would paint his famous picture of Phryne on a beach, when summer came,
+and he could retire to the solitary shore, taking with him the perfect
+beauty to serve as his model. Perhaps he could persuade the countess.
+Who knows! She smiled with satisfaction every time she heard from his
+lips the praise of her beauty. But meanwhile the master demanded that
+people should remember his name for his earlier works, that they should
+admire him for what he had already produced.
+
+He was irritated at the papers, which extolled the younger generation,
+remembered him only to mention him in passing, like a consecrated glory,
+like a man who was dead and had his pictures in the Museo del Prado. He
+was gnawed with dumb anger, like an actor who is tortured with envy,
+seeing the stage occupied by others.
+
+He wanted to work; he was going to work immediately. But as time passed,
+he felt an increasing laziness, which incapacitated him for work, a
+numbness in his hands, which he concealed even from his most intimate
+friends, ashamed when he recalled his lightness of touch in the old
+days.
+
+"This will not last," he said to himself with the confidence of a man
+who does not doubt his ability.
+
+In one of his fanciful moods, he compared himself with a dog, restless,
+fierce and aggressive when he is tormented with hunger, but gentle and
+peaceable when he is surrounded with comforts. He needed his periods of
+greed and restlessness, when he desired everything, when he could not
+find peace for his work, and in the midst of his marital troubles
+attacked the canvas as if it were an enemy, hurling colors on it
+furiously, in slaps of light. Even after he was rich and famous, he had
+had something to long for. "If I only were free! If I were master of my
+time! If I lived alone, without a family, without cares; as a true
+artist should live!" And now his wishes were fulfilled, he had nothing
+to hope for, but he was a victim of laziness that amounted to
+exhaustion, absolutely without desire, as if only wrath and restlessness
+were for him the internal goad of inspiration.
+
+The longing for fame tormented him; as the days went by and his name was
+not mentioned, he believed that he had come to an obscure death. He
+fancied that the youths turned their backs on him, to look in the
+opposite direction, storing him away among the respected dead, admiring
+other masters. His artistic pride made him seek opportunities for
+notoriety, with the guilelessness of a tyro. He, who scoffed so at the
+official honors and the "sheepfold" of the academies, suddenly
+remembered that several years before, after one of his successes, they
+had elected him a member of the Academy of Fine Arts.
+
+Cotoner was astonished to see the importance he began to attach to this
+unsolicited distinction, at which he had always laughed.
+
+"That was a boy's joking," said the master gravely. "Life cannot always
+be taken as a laughing matter. We must be serious, Pepe; we are getting
+on in years, and we must not always make fun of things that are
+essentially respectable."
+
+Besides, he charged himself with rudeness. Those worthy personages, whom
+he had often compared with all kinds of animals, no doubt thought it
+strange that the years went by without his caring to occupy his seat. He
+must go to the academic reception. And Cotoner, at his bidding, attended
+to all the details, from taking the news to those worthies, in order
+that they might set the date for the function, to arranging the speech
+of the new Academician. For Renovales learned with some misgiving that
+he must read a speech. He, accustomed to handling the brush and poorly
+trained in his childhood, took up the pen with timidity, and even in his
+letters to the Alberca woman preferred to represent his passionate
+phrases with amusing pictures, to embodying them in words.
+
+The old Bohemian got him out of this difficulty. He knew his Madrid
+well. The secrets of the world which are detailed in the newspapers had
+no mysteries for him. Renovales should have as magnificent a speech as
+any one.
+
+And one afternoon he brought to the studio a certain Isidro Maltrana,[A]
+a diminutive, ugly young fellow with a huge head, and an air of
+self-satisfaction and boldness that disgusted Renovales from the very
+first. He was well dressed but the lapels of his coat were dirty with
+ashes, and its collar was strewn with dandruff. The painter observed
+that he smelt of wine. At first he pompously styled him master, but
+after a few words he called him by name with disconcerting familiarity.
+He moved about the studio as if it were his own, as if he had spent his
+whole life in it, indifferent to its beautiful decorations.
+
+It would not be any trouble for him to undertake the preparation of a
+speech. That was his specialty. Academic receptions and works for
+members of Congress were his best field. He understood that the master
+needed him--a painter!
+
+And Renovales, who was beginning to find this Maltrana fellow attractive
+in spite of his insolence, drew himself up to his full height in the
+majesty of his fame. If it was a question of doing a picture for
+admission, he was the man. But a speech!
+
+"Agreed: you shall have the speech," said Maltrana. "It's an easy
+matter, I know the recipe. We shall speak of the holy traditions of the
+past, we shall despise certain daring innovations on the part of the
+inexperienced youth, which were perfectly proper twenty years ago, when
+you were beginning, but which now are out of place. Do you care for a
+thrust at modernism?"
+
+Renovales smiled, enchanted at the frankness with which this young
+fellow spoke of his task, and he moved one hand to suggest a balance.
+"Man alive! Like this. A just mean is what we want."
+
+"Of course, Renovales; flatter the old men and not quarrel with the
+young. You are a real master. You will be pleased with my work."
+
+With the calmness of a shopkeeper, before the artist had a chance to
+speak of the charge, he broached the matter. It would be two thousand
+_reales_; he had already told Cotoner. The low tariff; the one he set
+for people he liked.
+
+"A man must live, Renovales. I have a son."
+
+And his voice grew serious as he said this; his face, ugly and cynical,
+became noble for a moment, reflecting the cares of paternal love.
+
+"A son, dear master, for whom I do anything that turns up. If it is
+necessary I will steal. He is the only thing I have in the world. His
+mother died in misery in the hospital. I dreamt of being something, but
+you can't think of nonsense when you have a baby. Between the hope of
+being famous and the certainty of eating--eating is the first."
+
+But his tenderness was not of long duration. He recovered the cold,
+mercenary expression of a man who goes through life in an armor of
+cynicism, disillusioned by misfortune, setting a price on all his acts.
+They agreed on the sum; he should receive it when he handed over the
+speech.
+
+"And if you print it, as I hope," he said as he went away, "I will read
+the proof without any extra charge. Of course that is a special favor to
+you, because I am one of your admirers."
+
+Renovales spent several weeks in the preparations for his reception, as
+if it were the most important event in his life. The countess also took
+a great interest in the matter. She would see to it that it was a
+distinguished function, something like the receptions of the French
+Academy, described in the papers or in novels. All of her friends would
+be present. The great painter would read his speech, the cynosure of a
+hundred interested eyes, amid the fluttering of fans and the buzz of
+conversation. An immense success which would enrage many artists who
+were eager to get a foothold in high society.
+
+A few days before the function, Cotoner handed him a bundle of papers.
+It was a copy of the speech,--in a fair hand; it was already paid for.
+And Renovales, with the instinct of an actor anxious to make a good
+show, spent an afternoon, striding from studio to studio, with the
+manuscript in one hand and making energetic gestures with the other,
+while he read the paragraphs aloud. That impudent Maltrana was gifted!
+It was a work that filled the simple artist with enthusiasm, in his
+ignorance of everything except printing, a series of glorious trumpet
+blasts, in which were scattered names, many names; appreciations in
+tremulous rhetoric, historical summaries, so well rounded, so complete
+that it seemed as though mankind had been living since the beginning of
+the world with no other thought than Renovates' speech, and judging its
+acts in order that he might give them a definite interpretation.
+
+The artist felt a thrill of elevation as he repeated in eloquent
+succession Greek names, many of which were mere sounds to him, for he
+was not certain whether they were great sculptors or tragic poets.
+Again, he experienced a sensation of self-satisfaction when he
+encountered the names of Dante and Shakespeare. He knew that they had
+not painted, but they ought to appear in every speech which was worthy
+of respect. And when he came to the paragraphs on modern art, he seemed
+to touch terra firma, and smiled with a superior air. Maltrana did not
+know much about that subject; superficial appreciation of a layman; but
+he wrote well, very well; he could not have done better himself. And he
+studied his speech, till he could repeat whole paragraphs by heart,
+paying particular attention to the pronunciation of the difficult names,
+taking lessons from his most cultured friends.
+
+"It is for appearance's sake," he said naively. "It is because I don't
+want people to poke fun at me, even if I am only a painter."
+
+The day of the reception he had luncheon long before noon. He scarcely
+touched the food; this ceremony, which he had never seen, made him
+rather worried. To his anxiety was added the irritation he always felt
+when he had to attend to the care of his person.
+
+His long years of married life had accustomed him to neglect all the
+trivial, everyday needs of life. If he had to appear in different
+clothes than usual, the hands of his wife and daughter deftly arranged
+them for him. Even at the times of greatest ill-feeling, when he and
+Josephina hardly spoke to each other, he noticed around him the
+scrupulous order of that excellent housekeeper who removed all obstacles
+from his way, relieving him of the ordinary cares of life.
+
+Cotoner was away; the servant had gone to the countess's to take her
+some invitations which she had asked for, at the last minute, for some
+friends. Renovales decided to dress alone. His son-in-law and daughter
+were going to come for him at two. Lopez de Sosa had insisted on taking
+him to the Academy in his car, seeking, no doubt, by this a little ray
+of the splendor of official glory that was to be showered on his
+father-in-law.
+
+Renovales dressed himself, after struggling with the many difficulties
+that arose from his lack of habit. He was as awkward as a child without
+his mother's help. When at last he looked at himself in the mirror, with
+his dress coat on and his cravat neatly tied, he heaved a sigh of
+relief. At last! Now the insignia--the ribbon. Where could he find those
+honorary trinkets? Since Milita's wedding he had not had them on, the
+poor departed had put them away. Where could he find them? And hastily,
+fearing the time would go by and his children would surprise him before
+he finished the decoration of his person, out of breath, swearing with
+impatience, wandering around in hopeless confusion, unable to remember
+anything definitely, he entered the room his wife had used as a
+wardrobe. Perhaps she had put away his insignia there. He opened the
+doors of the great clothes-closets with a nervous pull. Clothes! Nothing
+but clothes.
+
+The odor of balsam, which made him think of the silent calm of the
+woods, was mingled with a subtle, mysterious perfume, a perfume of years
+gone by, of dead beauties, of forgotten memories, like the fragrance of
+dried flowers. This odor came from the mass of clothes that hung there,
+white, black, pink and blue dresses, with their colors dull and
+indistinct, the lace crumpled and yellow, retaining in their folds
+something of the living fragrance of the form they once had covered. The
+whole past of the dead woman was there. With superstitious care, she had
+stored away the gowns of the different periods of her life, as if she
+had been afraid to get rid of them, to tear out a part of her life.
+
+As the painter looked at some of these gowns, he felt the same emotion
+as if they were old friends who had suddenly appeared like an unexpected
+surprise. A pink skirt recalled the happy days in Rome; a blue suit
+brought to his memory the Piazza di san Marco, and he thought he heard
+the fluttering of the doves and the distant rumble of the noisy _Ride of
+the Valkyries_. The dark, cheap suits that belonged to the cruel days of
+struggle hung at the back of the closet, like the garb of suffering and
+sacrifice. A straw hat, bright as a summer wood, covered with red
+flowers and with cherries, seemed to smile to him from a shelf. Oh, he
+knew that too! Many a time its sharp edge of straw had stuck into his
+forehead, when at sunset on the roads of the Roman Compagna he used to
+bend down, with his arm around his little wife's waist, to kiss her lips
+that trembled softly, while from the distance in the blue mist came the
+tinkle of the bells of the flocks and the mournful songs of the
+drivers.
+
+That youthful perfume, grown old in its confinement, which poured from
+the closets in waves, with the rush of an old wine that escapes from the
+dusty bottle in spurts, spoke to him of the past, calling up the joys
+that were dead. His senses trembled, a subtle intoxication crept over
+him. He fancied he had fallen into a sea of perfume that buffeted him
+with its waves, playing with him as if he were an inert body. It was the
+scent of youth that came back to him; the incense of the happy days,
+fainter, more subtle with the regret of dead years. It was the perfume
+of her beauty which one night in Rome had made him sigh admiringly.
+
+"I worship you, Josephina. You are as fair as Goya's little _Maja_. You
+are the _Maja Desnuda_."
+
+Holding his breath like a swimmer, he delved into the depths of the
+closets, reaching out his hands greedily, yet eager to get out of there,
+to return, as soon as he could, to the surface, to the pure air. He came
+upon card-board boxes, bundles of belts and old lace, without finding
+what he was seeking. And every time that his trembling arms shook the
+old clothes, the swinging of the skirts seemed to throw in his face a
+wave of that dead, indefinable perfume which he breathed more with his
+fancy than with his senses.
+
+He wanted to get out as soon as possible. The insignia were not in the
+wardrobe. Perhaps he would find them in the chamber. And for the first
+time since the death of his wife, he ventured to turn the door key. The
+perfume of the past seemed to go with him; it had penetrated through all
+the pores of his body. He fancied he felt the pressure of a pair of
+distant, enormous arms, that came from the infinite. He was no longer
+afraid to enter the chamber.
+
+He groped his way, looking for one of the windows. When the shutters
+creaked and the sunlight rushed in, the painter's eyes, after a moment
+of blinking, saw, like a sweet, faint smile, the glow of the Venetian
+furniture.
+
+What a beautiful artistic chamber! After a year of absence, the painter
+admired the great clothes-press with its three mirrors, deep and blue as
+only the mirror-makers of Murano could make them and the ebony of the
+furniture inlaid with tiny bits of pearl and bright jewels, a specimen
+of the artistic genius of ancient Venice in contact with Oriental
+peoples. This furniture had been for Renovales one of the great
+undertakings of his youth; the whim of a lover, eager to bestow princely
+honors on his companion after years of strict economy.
+
+They had always had their luxurious bedroom wherever they were, even at
+the time of their poverty. In those hard days when he painted in the
+attic and Josephina did the cooking, they had no chairs, they ate from
+the same plate; Milita played with rag-dolls; but in their miserable,
+whitewashed alcove were piled up with sacred respect all that furniture
+of the fair-haired wife of some Doge, like a hope for the future, a
+promise of better times. She, poor woman, with her simple faith, cleaned
+it, worshiped it, waiting for the hour of magic transformation to move
+them to a palace.
+
+The painter glanced about the chamber calmly. He found nothing unusual
+there, nothing that moved him. Cotoner had prudently hidden the chair in
+which Josephina died.
+
+The princely bed, with its monumental head and foot of carved ebony and
+brilliant mosaic, looked vulgar with the mattresses piled in a heap.
+Renovales laughed at the terror which had so often made him stop in
+front of the locked door. Death had left no trace. Nothing there
+reminded him of Josephina. In the atmosphere floated that smell of
+closeness, that odor of dust and dampness which one finds in all rooms
+that have long been closed.
+
+The time was passing, the insignia must be found, and Renovales, already
+accustomed to the room, opened the clothes-press, expecting to find them
+in it.
+
+There, too, the wood seemed to scatter, as he opened the door, a perfume
+like that of the other room. It was fainter, more vague, more distant.
+
+Renovales thought it was an illusion of his senses. But no; from the
+depths of the clothes-press came an invisible vapor wrapping him in its
+caressing breath. There were no clothes there. His eyes recognized
+immediately in the bottom of a compartment the boxes he was looking for;
+but he did not reach out his hands for them; he stood motionless, lost
+in the contemplation of a thousand trivial objects that reminded him of
+Josephina.
+
+She was there, too; she came forth to meet him, more personal, more real
+than from among the heap of old clothes. Her gloves seemed to preserve
+the warmth and the outline of those hands which once had run caressingly
+through the artist's hair, her collars reminded him of her warm ivory
+neck where he used to place his kisses.
+
+His hands turned over everything with painful curiosity. An old fan,
+carefully put away, seemed to move him in spite of its sorry appearance.
+Among its broken folds he could see a trace of old colors--a head he had
+painted when his wife was only a friend--a gift for Senorita de
+Torrealta who wanted to have something done by the young artist. At the
+bottom of a case shone two huge pearls, surrounded by diamonds; a
+present from Milan, the first jewel of real worth which he had bought
+for his wife, as they were walking through the Piazza del Duomo; a whole
+remittance from his manager in Rome invested in this costly trinket
+which made the little woman flush with pleasure while her eyes rested
+on him with intense gratitude.
+
+His eager fingers, as they turned over boxes, belts, handkerchiefs and
+gloves, came upon souvenirs with which her person was forever connected.
+That poor woman had lived for him, only for him, as if her own existence
+were nothing, as if it had no meaning unless it were joined with his. He
+found carefully put away among belts and band-boxes--photographs of the
+places where she had spent her youth; the buildings of Rome; the
+mountains of the old Papal States, the canals of Venice--relics of the
+past which no doubt were of great value to her because they called up
+the image of her husband. And among these papers he saw dry, crushed
+flowers, proud roses, or modest wild flowers, withered leaves, nameless
+souvenirs whose importance Renovales realized, suspecting that they
+recalled some happy moment completely forgotten by him.
+
+The artist's portraits, at different ages, rose from all the corners,
+entangled among belts or buried under the piles of handkerchiefs. Then
+several bundles of letters appeared, the ink reddened with time, written
+in a hand that made the artist uneasy. He recognized it; it was dimly
+associated in his memory with some person whose name had escaped him.
+Fool! It was his own handwriting, the laborious heavy hand of his youth
+which was dexterous only with the brush. There in those yellow folds was
+the whole story of his life, his intellectual efforts to say "pretty
+things" like men who write. Not one was missing; the letters of their
+early engagement when, after they had seen and talked to each other,
+they still felt that they must put on paper what their lips did not
+venture to say; others with Italian stamps, exuberant with extravagant
+expressions of love, short notes he sent her when he was going to spend
+a few days with some other artists at Naples, or to visit some dead
+city in the Marcha; then the letters from Paris to the old Venetian
+palace, inquiring anxiously for the little girl, asking about the
+nursing, trembling with fear at the possibility of the inevitable
+diseases of childhood.
+
+Not one was lacking; all were there, put away like fetishes, perfumed
+with love, tied up with ribbons like the balsam and swathings of a
+mummified life. Her letters had had a different fate, her written love
+had been scattered, lost in the void. They had been left forgotten in
+old suits, burned in the fireplaces, or had fallen into strange hands,
+where they provoked laughter at their tender simplicity. The only
+letters he kept were a few of the other woman's and, as he thought of
+this, he was seized with remorse, with infinite shame at his evil
+doings.
+
+He read the first lines of some of them, with a strange feeling, as if
+they were written by another man, wondering at their passionate tone.
+And it was he who had written that! How he loved Josephina then! It did
+not seem possible that this affection could have ended so coldly. He was
+surprised at the indifference of the last years; he no longer remembered
+the troubles of their life together; he saw his wife now as she was in
+her youth, with her calm face, her quiet smile and admiration in her
+eyes.
+
+He continued to read, passing eagerly from letter to letter. He wondered
+at his own youth, virtuous in spite of his passionate nature, at the
+chastity of his devotion to his wife, the only, the unquestionable one.
+He experienced the joy, tinged with melancholy, which a decrepit old man
+feels at the contemplation of his youthful portrait. And he had been
+like that! From the bottom of his soul, a stern voice seemed to rise in
+a reproachful tone, "Yes, like that, when you were good, when you were
+honorable."
+
+He became so absorbed in his reading that he did not notice the lapse of
+time. Suddenly he heard steps in the distant hallway, the rustle of
+skirts, his daughter's voice. Outside the house a horn was tooting; his
+haughty son-in-law telling him to hurry; trembling with fear at the
+prospect of being discovered, he took the insignia and the ribbons out
+of their cases and hastily closed the door of the clothes-press.
+
+The reception of the Academy was almost a failure for Renovales. The
+countess found him very interesting, with his face pale with excitement,
+his breast starred with jewels and his shirt front cut with several
+bright lines of colors. But as soon as he stood up amid general
+curiosity, with his manuscript in his hand, and began to read the first
+paragraphs, a murmur arose which kept increasing and finally drowned out
+his voice. He read thickly, with the haste of a school-boy who wants to
+have it over, without noticing what he was saying, in a monotonous
+sing-song. The sonorous rehearsals in the studio, the careful
+preparation of dramatic gestures was forgotten. His mind seemed to be
+somewhere else, far away from that ceremony; his eyes saw nothing but
+the letters. The fashionable assemblage went out, glad they had gathered
+and seen each other again. Many lips laughed at the speech behind their
+gauze fans, delighted to be able to scratch indirectly his friend the
+Alberca woman.
+
+"Awful, my dear! Insufferably boring!"
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+As soon as he awoke the next day, Renovales felt that he must have open
+air, light, space, and he went out of the house, not stopping in his
+walk, up the Castellana, until he reached the clearing near the
+Exhibition Hall.
+
+The night before he had dined at the Albercas'--almost a formal banquet
+in honor of his entrance into the Academy, at which many of the
+distinguished gentlemen who formed the countess's coterie were present.
+She seemed radiant with joy, as if she were celebrating a triumph of her
+own. The count treated the famous master with greater respect than ever;
+he had just advanced another step in glory. His respect for all honorary
+distinctions made him admire that Academic medal, the only distinction
+he could not add to his load of insignia.
+
+Renovales spent a bad night. The countess's champagne did not agree with
+him. He had gone home with a sort of fear, as if something unusual was
+awaiting him which his uneasiness could not explain. He took off the
+dress clothes which had been torturing him for several hours and went to
+bed, surprised at the vague fear that followed him even to the
+threshhold of his room. He saw nothing unusual around him, his room
+presented the same appearance it always did. He feel asleep, overcome by
+weariness, by the digestive torpor of that extraordinary banquet, and he
+did not awake at all during the night; but his sleep was cruel, tossed
+with dreams that perhaps made him groan.
+
+On awakening, late in the morning, at the steps of his servant in the
+dressing room, he realized by the tumbled condition of the bed-clothes,
+by the cold sweat on his forehead and the weariness of his body what a
+restless night he had passed amid nervous starts.
+
+His brain, still heavy with sleep, could not unravel the memories of the
+night. He knew only that he had had unpleasant dreams; perhaps he had
+wept. The one thing he could recall was a pale face, rising from among
+the black veils of unconsciousness, around which all his dreams were
+centered. It was not Josephina; the face had the expression of a person
+of another world.
+
+But as his mental numbness gradually disappeared, while he was washing
+and dressing, and while the servant was helping him on with his
+overcoat, he thought, summoning his memories with an effort, that it
+might be she. Yes, it was she. Now he remembered that in his dream he
+had been conscious of that perfume which had followed him since the day
+before, which accompanied him to the Academy, disturbing his reading,
+and which had gone with him to the banquet, running between his eyes and
+Concha's like a mist, through which he looked at her, without seeing
+her.
+
+The coolness of the morning cleared his mind. The wide prospect from the
+heights of the Exhibition Hall seemed to blot out instantly the memories
+of the night.
+
+A wind from the mountains was blowing on the plateau near the
+Hippodrome. As he walked against the wind, he felt a buzz in his ears,
+like the distant roar of the sea. In the background, beyond the slopes
+with their little red houses and wintry poplars, bare as broomsticks,
+the mountains of Guadarrama stood out, luminously clear against the blue
+sky, with their snowy crests and their huge peaks which seemed made of
+salt. In the opposite direction, sunk in a deep cut, appeared the
+covering of Madrid; the black roofs, the pointed towers--all indistinct
+in a haze that gave the buildings in the background the vague blue of
+the mountains.
+
+The plateau, covered with wretched, thin grass, its furrows stiffly
+frozen, flashed here and there in the sunlight. The bits of tile on the
+ground, broken pieces of china and tin cans reflected the light as if
+they were precious metals.
+
+Renovales looked for a long while at the back of the Exhibition Palace;
+the yellow walls trimmed with red brick which hardly rose above the edge
+of the clearing; the flat zinc roofs, shining like dead seas; the
+central cupola, huge, swollen, cutting the sky with its black curves,
+like a balloon on the point of rising. From one wing of the Palace came
+the sound of bugles, prolonging their warlike notes to the accompaniment
+of the hoofbeats amid clouds of dust. Beside one door swords were
+flashing and the sun was reflected on patent-leather hats.
+
+The painter smiled. That palace had been erected for them, and now the
+rural police occupied it. Once every two years Art entered it, claiming
+the place from the horses of the guardians of peace. Statues were set up
+in rooms that smelt of oats and stout shoes. But this anomaly did not
+last long; the intruder was driven out, as soon as the place was
+beginning to have a semblance of European culture, and there remained in
+the Exhibition Palace the true, the national, the privileged police, the
+sorry jades of holy authority which galloped down to the streets of
+Madrid when its slothful peace was at rare intervals disturbed.
+
+As the master looked at the black cupola, he remembered the days of
+exhibitions; he saw the long-haired, anxious youths, now gentle and
+flattering, now angry and iconoclastic, coming from all the cities of
+Spain with their pictures under their arms and mighty ambitions in
+their minds. He smiled at the thought of the unpleasantness and disgust
+he had suffered under that roof, when the turbulent throng of artists
+crowded around him, annoyed him, admiring him more because of his
+position as an influential judge than because of his works. It was he
+who awarded the prizes in the opinion of those young fellows who
+followed him with looks of fear and hope. On the afternoon when the
+prizes were awarded, groups rushed out to meet him in the portico at the
+news of his arrival; they greeted him with extravagant demonstrations of
+respect. Some walked in front of him, talking loudly. "Who? Renovales?
+The greatest painter in the world. Next to Velasquez." And at the end of
+the afternoon, when the two sheets of paper were placed on the columns
+of the rotunda, with the lists of winners, the master prudently slipped
+out to avoid the final explosion. The childish soul that every artist
+has within him burst out frankly at the announcement. False pretences
+were over; every man showed his true nature. Some hid between the
+statues, dejected and ashamed, with their fists in their eyes, weeping
+at the thought of the return to their distant home, of the long misery
+they had suffered with no other hope than that which had just vanished.
+Others stood straight as roosters, their ears red, their lips pale,
+looking toward the entrance of the palace with flaming eyes, as if they
+wanted to see from there a certain pretentious house with a Greek facade
+and a gold inscription. "The fossil! It is a shame that the fortunes of
+the younger men, who really amount to something, are entrusted to an old
+fogey who has run out, a 'four-flusher' who will never leave anything
+worth while behind him!" Oh, from those moments had arisen all the
+annoyances of his artistic activity. Every time that he heard of an
+unjust censure, a brutal denial of his ability, a merciless attack in
+some obscure paper, he remembered the rotunda of the Exhibition, that
+stormy crowd of painters around the bits of paper which contained their
+sentences. He thought with wonder and sympathy of the blindness of those
+youths who cursed life because of a failure, and were capable of giving
+their health, their vigor, in exchange for the sorry glory of a picture,
+less lasting even than the frail canvas. Every medal was a rung on the
+ladder; they measured the importance of these awards, giving them a
+meaning like that of a soldier's stripes. And he too had been young! He
+too had embittered the best years of his life in these combats, like
+amoebae who struggle together in a drop of water, fancying they may
+conquer a huge world! What interest had eternal beauty in these
+regimental ambitions, in this ladder-climbing fever of those who strove
+to be her interpreters?
+
+The master went home. The walk had made him forget his anxiety of the
+night before. His body, weakened by his easy life, seemed to acknowledge
+this exercise with a violent reaction. His legs itched slightly, the
+blood throbbed in his temples, it seemed to spread through his body in a
+wave of warmth. He exulted in his power and tasted the joy of every
+organism that is performing its functions in harmonious regularity.
+
+As he crossed the garden, he was humming a song. He smiled to the
+concierge's wife who had opened the gate for him and to the ugly
+watchdog who came up with a caressing whine to lick his trousers. He
+opened the glass door, passing from the noise outside into deep,
+convent-like silence. His feet sank in the soft rugs; the only sounds
+were the mysterious trembling of the pictures which covered the walls up
+to the ceiling, the creaking of invisible wood-borers in the picture
+frames, the swing of the hangings in a breath of air. Everything that
+the master had painted; studies or whims, finished or unfinished, was
+placed on the ground floor, together with pictures and drawings by some
+famous companions or favorite pupils. Milita had amused herself for a
+long time before she was married, in this decoration which reached even
+to poorly lighted hallways.
+
+As he left his hat and stick on the hat-rack, the eyes of the master
+fell on a nearby water-color, as if this picture attracted his attention
+among the others which surrounded it. He was surprised that he should
+now notice it of a sudden, after passing by it so many times without
+seeing it. It was not bad; but it was timid; it showed lack of
+experience. Whose could it be? Perhaps Soldevilla's. But as he drew near
+to see it better, he smiled. It was his own! How differently he painted
+then! He tried to remember when and where he had painted it. To help his
+memory, he looked closely at that charming woman's head, with its dreamy
+eyes, wondering who the model could have been.
+
+Suddenly a cloud came over his face. The artist seemed confused,
+ashamed. How stupid! It was his wife, the Josephina of the early days,
+when he used to gaze at her admiringly, delighting in reproducing her
+face.
+
+He threw the blame for his slowness on Milita and determined to have the
+study taken away from there. His wife's portrait ought not be in the
+hall, beside the hat-rack.
+
+After luncheon he gave orders to the servant to take down the picture
+and move it into one of the drawing-rooms. The servant looked surprised.
+
+"There are so many portraits of the mistress. You have painted her so
+many times, sir. The house is full."
+
+Renovales mimicked the servant's expression. "So many! So many!" He knew
+how many times he had painted her! With a sudden curiosity before going
+to the studio, he entered the parlor where Josephina received her
+callers. There, in the place of honor, he saw a large portrait of his
+wife, painted in Rome, a dainty woman with a lace mantilla, a black
+ruffled skirt and, in her hand, a tortoise-shell fan--a veritable Goya.
+He gazed for a moment at that attractive face, shaded by the black lace,
+its oriental eyes in sharp contrast to its aristocratic pallor. How
+beautiful Josephina was in those days!
+
+He opened the windows the better to see the portrait and the light fell
+on the dark red walls making the frames of other smaller pictures flash.
+
+Then the painter saw that the Goyesque picture was not the only one.
+Other Josephinas accompanied him in the solitude. He gazed with
+astonishment at the face of his wife, which seemed to rise from all
+sides of the parlor. Little studies of women of the people or ladies of
+the 18th century; water-colors of Moorish women; Greek women with the
+stiff severity of Alma-Tadema's archaic figures; everything in the
+parlor, everything he had painted, was Josephina, had her face, or
+showed traces of her with the vagueness of a memory.
+
+He passed to the adjoining parlor and there, too, his wife's face,
+painted by him, came to meet him among other pictures by his friends.
+
+When had he done all that? He could not remember; he was surprised at
+the enormous quantity of work he had performed unconsciously. He seemed
+to have spent his whole life painting Josephina.
+
+Afterwards, in all the hallways, in all the rooms where pictures were
+hung, his wife met his gaze, under the most varied aspects, frowning or
+smiling, beautiful or sad with sickness. They were sketched, simple,
+unfinished charcoal drawings of her head in the corner of a canvas, but
+always that glance followed him, sometimes with an expression of
+melancholy tenderness, sometimes with intense reproach. Where had his
+eyes been? He had lived amid all this without seeing it. Every day he
+had passed by Josephina without noticing her. His wife was resurrected;
+henceforth, she would sit down at table, she would enter his chamber, he
+would pass through the house always under the gaze of two eyes which in
+the past had pierced into his soul.
+
+The dead woman was not dead; she hovered about him, revived by his hand.
+He could not take a step without seeing her face on every side. She
+greeted him from above the doors, from the ends of the rooms she seemed
+to call him.
+
+In his three studios, his surprise was still greater. All his most
+intimate painting, which he had done as study, from impulse, without any
+desire for sale, was stored away there, and all was a memory of the dead
+woman. The pictures which dazzled the callers were hung low, down on the
+level of the eyes, on easels, or fastened to the wall, amid the
+sumptuous furniture; up above, reaching to the ceiling were arranged the
+studies, memories, unframed canvases, like old, forgotten works, and in
+this collection at the first glance Renovales saw the enigmatic face
+rising towards him.
+
+He had lived without lifting his eyes, accustomed as he was to
+everything about him, and looking around, without seeing, without
+noticing those women, different in appearance but alike in expression,
+who watched him from above. And the countess had been there several
+afternoons, to see him alone in the studio! And the Persian silk
+draperies, hung on lances before the deep divan, had not hidden them
+from that sad, fixed gaze which seemed to multiply in the upper stretch
+of the walls.
+
+To forget his remorse, he amused himself by counting the canvases which
+reproduced his wife's dainty little face. They were many--the whole life
+of an artist. He tried to remember when and where he had painted them.
+In the first days of his love, he felt that he must paint her, with an
+irresistible impulse to transfer to the canvas everything he delighted
+to see, everything he loved. Afterwards, it had been a desire to flatter
+her, to coax her with a false show of affection, to convince her that
+she was the only object of his artistic worship, copying her in a vague
+likeness, giving to her features, marred by illness, a soft veil of
+idealism. He could not live without working and, like many painters, he
+used as models the people around him. His daughter had carried to her
+new home a load of paintings, all the pictures, rough sketches,
+water-colors and panels which represented her from the time she used to
+play with the cat, dressing him in baby clothes, until she was a proud
+young lady, courted by Soldevilla and the man who was now her husband.
+
+The mother had remained there, rising after death about the artist in
+oppressive profusion. All the little incidents in life had given
+Renovales an occasion to paint new pictures. He recalled his enthusiasm
+every time he saw her in a new dress. The colors changed her; she was a
+new woman, so he would declare with a vehemence which his wife took for
+admiration and which was merely the desire for a model.
+
+Josephina's whole life had been fixed by her husband's hand. In one
+canvas she appeared dressed in white, walking through a meadow with the
+poetic dreaminess of an Ophelia; in another, wearing a large, plumed hat
+covered with jewels, she showed the self-satisfaction of a
+manufacturer's wife, secure in her well-being; a black curtain served as
+a background for her bare neck and shoulders. In another picture she had
+her sleeves rolled up; a white apron covered her from her breast to her
+feet, on her forehead was a little wrinkle of care and weariness, and in
+her whole mien the carelessness of one who has no time to attend to the
+adornment of her person. This last was the portrait of the bitter days,
+the image of the courageous housekeeper, without servants, working with
+her delicate hands in a wretched attic, striving that the artist might
+lack nothing, that the petty annoyances of life might not come to
+distract him from his supreme efforts for success.
+
+This portrait filled the artist with the melancholy which the memory of
+bitter days inspires in the midst of comfort. His gratitude toward his
+brave companion brought with it once more remorse.
+
+"Oh, Josephina! Josephina!"
+
+When Cotoner arrived, he found the master lying face down on the couch
+with his head in his hands, as if he were asleep. He tried to interest
+him by talking about the function of the day before. A great success;
+the papers spoke of him and his speech, declaring that he was a great
+writer and could win as marked a success in literature as in art. Had he
+not read them?
+
+Renovales answered with a bored expression. He had found them, when he
+went out in the morning, on a table in the reception-room. He had cast a
+glance at his picture surrounded by the solid columns of his speech but
+he had put off reading the praises until later. They did not interest
+him; he was thinking of something else--he was sad.
+
+And in answer to Cotoner's anxious questions, who thought he must be
+ill, he said quietly:
+
+"I am well enough. It's melancholy. I'm tired of doing nothing. I want
+to work and haven't the strength."
+
+Suddenly he interrupted his old friend, pointing to all the portraits
+of Josephina, as if they were new works which he had just produced.
+
+Cotoner expressed surprise. He knew them all; they had been there for
+years. What was strange about them?
+
+The master told him of his recent surprise. He had lived beside them
+without seeing them, he had just discovered them two hours before. And
+Cotoner laughed.
+
+"You are rather unsettled, Mariano. You live without noticing what is
+around you. That is why you don't know of Soldevilla's marriage to a
+rich girl. The poor boy was disappointed because his master was not
+present at the wedding."
+
+Renovales shrugged his shoulders. What did he care for such follies?
+There was a long pause and the master, pensive and sad, suddenly raised
+his head with a determined expression.
+
+"What do you think of those portraits, Pepe?" he asked anxiously. "Is it
+she? I couldn't have made a mistake in painting them, I couldn't have
+seen her different from what she really was, could I?"
+
+Cotoner broke out laughing. Really, the master was out of his mind. What
+questions! Those portraits were marvels, like all of his work. But
+Renovales insisted with the impatience of doubt. His opinion! Were those
+Josephinas like his wife!
+
+"Exactly," said the Bohemian. "Why, man alive, their fidelity to life is
+the most astonishing thing about your portraits!"
+
+He declared this confidently, but a shadow of doubt worried him. Yes, it
+was Josephina, but there was something unusual, idealized about her. Her
+features looked the same, but they had an inner light that made them
+more beautiful. It was a defect he had always found in these pictures,
+but he said nothing.
+
+"And she," insisted the master, "was she really beautiful? What did you
+think of her as a woman? Tell me, Pepe,--without hesitating. It's
+strange, I can't remember very well what she was like."
+
+Cotoner was disconcerted by these questions, and answered with some
+embarrassment. What an odd thing! Josephina was very good--an angel; he
+always remembered her with gratitude. He had wept for her as for a
+mother, though she might almost have been his daughter. She had always
+been very considerate and thoughtful of the poor Bohemian.
+
+"Not that," interrupted the master. "I want to know if you thought she
+was beautiful, if she really was beautiful."
+
+"Why, man, yes," said Cotoner resolutely. "She was beautiful or, rather,
+attractive. At the end she seemed a bit changed. Her illness! But all in
+all, an angel."
+
+And the master, calmed by these words, stood looking at his own works.
+
+"Yes, she was very beautiful," he said slowly, without turning his eyes
+from the canvases. "Now I recognize it; now I see her better. It's
+strange, Pepe. It seems as if I have found Josephina to-day after a long
+journey. I had forgotten her; I was no longer certain what her face was
+like."
+
+There was another long pause, and once more the master began to ply his
+friend with anxious questions.
+
+"Did she love me? Do you think she really loved me? Was it love that
+made her sometimes act so--strangely?"
+
+This time Cotoner did not hesitate as he had at the former questions.
+
+"Love you? Wildly, Mariano. As no man has been loved in this world. All
+that there was between you was jealousy--too much affection. I know it
+better than anyone else; old friends, like me, who go in and out of the
+house just like old dogs, are treated with intimacy and hear things the
+husband does not know. Believe me, Mariano, no one will ever love you as
+she did. Her sulky words were only passing clouds. I am sure you no
+longer remember them. What did not pass was the other, the love she bore
+you. I am positive; you know that she told me everything, that I was the
+only person she could tolerate toward the end."
+
+Renovales seemed to thank his friend for these words with a glance of
+joy.
+
+They went out to walk at the end of the afternoon, going toward the
+center of Madrid. Renovales talked of their youth, of their days in
+Rome. He laughed as he reminded Cotoner of his famous stock of Popes, he
+recalled the funny shows in the studios, the noisy entertainments, and
+then, after he was married, the evenings of friendly intercourse in that
+pretty little dining-room on the Via Margutta; the arrival of the
+Bohemian and the other artists of his circle to drink a cup of tea with
+the young couple; the loud discussions over painting, which made the
+neighbors protest, while she, his Josephina, still surprised at finding
+herself the mistress of a household, without her mother, and surrounded
+by men, smiled timidly to them all, thinking that those fearful
+comrades, with hair like highwaymen but as innocent and peevish as
+children, were very funny and interesting.
+
+"Those were the days, Pepe! Youth, which we never appreciate till it has
+gone!"
+
+Walking straight ahead, without knowing where they were going, absorbed
+in their conversation and their memories, they suddenly found themselves
+at the Puerta del Sol. Night had fallen; the electric lights were
+coming out; the shop windows threw patches of light on the sidewalks.
+
+Cotoner looked at the clock on the Government Building.
+
+"Aren't you going to the Alberca woman's house to-night?"
+
+Renovales seemed to awaken. Yes, he must go; they expected him. But he
+was not going. His friend looked at him with a shocked expression, as if
+he considered it a serious error to scorn a dinner.
+
+The painter seemed to lack the courage to spend the evening between
+Concha and her husband. He thought of her with a sort of aversion; he
+felt as if he might brutally repel her constant caresses and tell
+everything to the husband in an outburst of frankness. It was a
+disgrace, treachery--that life _a trois_ which the society woman
+accepted as the happiest of states.
+
+"It's intolerable," he said to dissipate his friend's surprise. "I can't
+stand her. She's a regular barnacle, and won't let me go for a minute."
+
+He had never spoken to Cotoner of his affair with the Alberca woman, but
+he did not have to tell him anything, he assumed that he knew.
+
+"But she's pretty, Mariano," said he. "A wonderful woman! You know I
+admire her. You might use her for your Greek picture."
+
+The master cast at him a glance of pity for his ignorance. He felt a
+desire to scoff at her, to injure her, thus justifying his indifference.
+
+"Nothing but a facade. A face and a figure."
+
+And bending over toward his friend he whispered to him seriously as if
+he were revealing the secret of a terrible crime.
+
+"She's knock-kneed. A regular swindle."
+
+A satyr-like smile spread over Cotoner's lips and his ears wriggled. It
+was the joy of a chaste man; the satisfaction of knowing the secret
+defects of a beauty who was out of his reach.
+
+The master did not want to leave his friend. He needed him, he looked
+at him with tender sympathy, seeing in him something of his dead wife.
+When she was sad, he had been her confidant. When her nerves were on
+edge, this simple man's words ended the crisis in a flood of tears. With
+whom could he talk about her better?
+
+"We will dine together, Pepe; we will go to the _Italianos_--a Roman
+banquet, _ravioli_, _piccata_, anything you want and a bottle of Chianti
+or two, as many as you can drink, and at the end sparkling Asti, better
+than champagne. Does that suit you, old man?"
+
+Arm in arm they walked along, their heads high, a smile on their lips,
+like two young painters, eager to celebrate a recent sale with a
+gluttonous relief from their misery.
+
+Renovales went back into his memories and poured them out in a torrent.
+He reminded Cotoner of a _trattoria_ in an alley in Rome, beyond the
+statue of Pasquino, before you reach the Via Governo Vecchio, a chop
+house of ecclesiastical quiet, run by the former cook of a cardinal. The
+shelves of the establishment were always covered with the headgear of
+the profession, priestly tiles. The merriment of the artists shocked the
+sedate frugality of the habitues, priests of the Papal palace or
+visitors who were in Rome scheming advancement; loud-mouthed lawyers in
+dirty frock-coats from the nearby Palace of Justice, loaded with papers.
+
+"What _maccheroni!_ Remember, Pepe? How poor Josephina liked it!"
+
+They used to reach the _trattoria_ at night in a merry company--she on
+his arm and around them the friends whose admiration for the promising
+young painter attracted them to him. Josephina worshiped the mysteries
+of the kitchen, the traditional secrets of the solemn table of the
+princes of the Church, which had come down to the street, taking refuge
+in that little room. On the white table cloth trembled the amber
+reflection of the wine of Orvieto in decanters, a thick, yellow, golden
+liquid, of clerical sweetness, a drink of old-time pontiffs, which
+descended to the stomach like fire and more than once had mounted to
+heads covered with the tiara.
+
+On moonlit nights, they used to go from there and walk to the Colosseum
+to look at the gigantic, monstrous ruin under the flood of blue light.
+Josephina, shaking with nervous excitement, went down into the dark
+tunnels, groping along among the fallen stones, till she was on the open
+slope, facing the silent circle, which seemed to enclose the corpse of a
+whole people. Looking around with anxiety, she thought of the terrible
+beasts which had trod upon that sand. Suddenly came a frightful roar and
+a black beast leaped forth from the deep vomitory. Josephina clung to
+her husband, with a shriek of terror, and all laughed. It was Simpson,
+an American painter, who bent over, walking on all fours, to attack his
+companions with fierce cries.
+
+"Do you remember, Pepe?" Renovales kept saying, "What days! What joy!
+What a fine companion the little girl was before her illness saddened
+her!"
+
+They dined, talking of their youth, mingling with their memories the
+image of the dead. Afterwards, they walked the streets till midnight,
+and Renovales was always going back to those days, recalling his
+Josephina, as if he had spent his life worshiping her. Cotoner was tired
+of the conversation and said "Good-by" to the master. What new hobby was
+this? Poor Josephina was very interesting, but they had spent the whole
+evening without talking of anything else, as though memory of her was
+the only thing in the world.
+
+Renovales started home impatiently; he took a cab to get there sooner.
+He felt as anxious as if some one were waiting for him; that showy
+house, cold and solitary before, seemed animated with a spirit he could
+not define, a beloved soul which filled it, pervading all like perfume.
+
+As he entered, preceded by the sleepy servant, his first glance was for
+the water-color. He smiled; he wanted to bid good-night to that head
+whose eyes rested on him.
+
+For all the Josephinas who met his gaze, rising from the shadow of the
+walls, as he turned on the electric lights in the parlors and hallways,
+he had the same smile and greeting. He no longer was uneasy in the
+presence of those faces which he had looked at in the morning with
+surprise and fear. She saw him; she read his thoughts; she forgave him,
+surely. She had always been so good!
+
+He hesitated a moment on his way, wishing to go to the studios and turn
+on the lights. There he could see her full length, in all her grace; he
+would talk to her, he would ask her forgiveness in the deep silence of
+those great rooms. But the master stopped. What was he thinking of? Was
+he going to lose his senses? He drew his hand across his forehead, as if
+he wanted to wipe these ideas out of his mind. No doubt it was the Asti
+that led him to such absurdities. To sleep!
+
+When he was in the dark, lying in his daughter's little bed, he felt
+uneasy. He could not sleep, he was uncomfortable. He was tempted to go
+out of the room and take refuge in the deserted bed-chamber as if only
+there could he find rest and sleep. Oh, the Venetian bed, that princely
+piece of furniture which kept his whole history, where he had whispered
+words of love; where they had talked so many times in low tones of his
+longing for glory and wealth; where his daughter was born!
+
+With the energy which showed in all his whims, the master put on his
+clothes, and quietly, as if he feared to be overheard by his servant
+who slept nearby, made his way to the chamber.
+
+He turned the key with the caution of a thief, and advanced on tiptoe,
+under the soft, pink light which an old lantern shed from the center of
+the ceiling. He carefully stretched out the mattresses on the abandoned
+bed. There were no sheets nor pillows. The room so long deserted was
+cold. What a pleasant night he was going to spend! How well he would
+sleep there! The gold-embroidered cushions from a sofa would serve as a
+pillow. He wrapped himself in an overcoat and got into bed, dressed,
+putting out the light so as not to see reality, to dream, peopling the
+darkness with the sweet deceits of his fancy.
+
+On those mattresses, Josephina had slept. He did not see her as in the
+last days,--sick, emaciated, worn with physical suffering. His mind
+repelled that painful image, bent on beautiful illusions. The Josephina
+whom he saw, the Josephina within him, was the other, of the first days
+of their love, and not as she had been in reality but as he had seen
+her, as he had painted her.
+
+His memory passed over a great stretch of time, dark and stormy; it
+leaped from the regret of the present to the happy days of youth. He no
+longer recalled the years of trying confinement, when they quarreled
+together, unable to follow the same path. They were unimportant
+disturbances in life. He thought only of her smiling kindness, her
+generosity, and submissiveness. How tenderly they had lived together for
+a part of their life, in that bed which now knew only the loneliness of
+his body.
+
+The artist shivered under his inadequate covering. In this abnormal
+situation, exterior impressions called up memories--fragments of the
+past that slowly came to his mind. The cold made him think of the rainy
+nights in Venice, when it poured for hour after hour on the narrow
+alleys and deserted canals in the deep, solemn silence of a city without
+horses, without wheels, without any sound of life, except the lapping of
+the solitary water on the marble stairways. They were in the same calm,
+under the warm eider-down, amid the same furniture which he now half saw
+in the shadow.
+
+Through the slits of the lowered blind shone the glow of the lamp which
+lighted the nearby canal. On the ceiling a spot of light flickered with
+the reflection of the dead water, constantly crossed by lines of shadow.
+They, closely embraced, watched this play of light and water above them.
+They knew that outside it was cold and damp; they exulted in their
+physical warmth, in the selfishness of being together, with that
+delicious sense of comfort, buried in silence as if the world were a
+thing of the past, as if their chamber were a warm oasis, in the midst
+of cold and darkness.
+
+Sometimes they heard a mournful cry in the silence. _Aooo!_ It was the
+gondolier giving warning before he turned the corner. Across the spot of
+light which shimmered on the ceiling slipped a black, Lilliputian
+gondola, a shadow toy, on the stern of which bent a manikin the size of
+a fly, wielding the oar. And, thinking of those who passed in the rain,
+lashed by the icy gusts, they experienced a new pleasure and clung
+closer to each other under the soft cider-down and their lips met,
+disturbing the calm of their rest with the noisy insolence of youth and
+love.
+
+Renovales no longer felt cold. He turned restlessly on the mattresses;
+the metallic embroidery of the cushions stuck in his face; he stretched
+out his arms in the darkness, and the silence was broken by a despairing
+cry, the lament of a child who demands the impossible, who asks for the
+moon.
+
+"Josephina! Josephina!"
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+One morning the painter sent an urgent summons to Cotoner and the latter
+arrived in great alarm at the terms of the message.
+
+"It's nothing serious," said Renovales. "I want you to tell me where
+Josephina was buried. I want to see her."
+
+It was a desire which had been slowly taking form in his mind during
+several nights; a whim of the long hours of sleeplessness through which
+he dragged in the darkness.
+
+More than a week before, he had moved into the large chamber, choosing
+among the bed linen, with a painstaking care that surprised the
+servants, the most worn sheets, which called up old memories with their
+embroidery. He did not find in this linen that perfume of the closets
+which had disturbed him so deeply; but there was something in them, the
+illusion, the certainty that she had many a time touched them.
+
+After soberly and severely telling Cotoner of his wish, Renovales felt
+that he must offer some excuse. It was disgraceful that he did not know
+where Josephina was; that he had not yet gone to visit her. His grief at
+her death had left him helpless and afterward, the long journey.
+
+"You always know things, Pepe! You had charge of the funeral
+arrangements. Tell me where she is; take me to see her."
+
+Up to that time he had not thought of her remains. He remembered the day
+of the funeral, his dramatic grief which kept him in a corner with his
+face buried in his hands. His intimate friends, the elect, who
+penetrated to his retreat, clad in black, and wearing gloomy faces,
+caught his hand and pressed it effusively. "Courage, Mariano. Be strong,
+master." And outside the house, a constant trampling of horses' feet;
+the iron fence black with the curious crowd, a double file of carriages
+as far as the eye could see; reporters going from group to group, taking
+down names.
+
+All Madrid was there. And they had carried her away to the slow step of
+a pair of horses with waving plumes, amid the undertaker's men in white
+wigs and gold batons--and he had forgotten her, had felt no interest in
+seeing the corner of the cemetery where she was buried forever, under
+the glare of the sun, under the night rains that dripped upon her grave.
+He cursed himself now for this outrageous neglect.
+
+"Tell me where she is, Pepe. Take me. I want to see her."
+
+He implored with the eagerness of remorse; he wanted to see her once, as
+soon as possible, like a sinner who fears death and cries for
+absolution.
+
+Cotoner acceded to this immediate trip. She was in the Almudena
+cemetery, which had been closed for some time. Only those who had long
+standing titles to a lot went there now. Cotoner had desired to bury
+Josephina beside her mother in the same inclosure where the stone that
+covered the "lamented genius of diplomacy" was growing tarnished. He
+wanted her to rest among her own.
+
+On the way, Renovales felt a sort of anguish. Like a sleep-walker he saw
+the streets of the city passing by the carriage window, then they went
+down a steep hill, ill-kempt gardens, where loafers were sleeping,
+leaning against the trees, or women were combing their hair in the sun;
+a bridge; wretched suburbs with tumble-down houses; then the open
+country, hilly roads and at last a grove of cypress trees beyond an
+adobe wall and the tops of marble buildings, angels stretching out their
+wings with a trumpet at their lips, great crosses, torch-holders mounted
+on tripods, and a pure, blue sky which seemed to smile with superhuman
+indifference at the excitement of that ant, named Renovales.
+
+He was going to see her; to step on the ground which covered her body;
+to breathe an atmosphere in which there was still perhaps some of that
+warmth which was the breath of the dead woman's soul. What would he say
+to her?
+
+As he entered the graveyard he looked at the keeper, an ugly, dismal old
+fellow, as pale and yellow and greasy as a wax candle. That man lived
+constantly near Josephina! He was seized with generous gratitude; he had
+to restrain himself, thinking of his companion, or he would have given
+him all the money he had with him.
+
+Their steps resounded in the silence. They felt the murmuring calm of an
+abandoned garden about them, where there were more pavilions and statues
+than trees. They went down ruined colonnades, which echoed their steps
+strangely; over slabs which sounded hollow under their feet,--the void,
+trembling at the light touch of life.
+
+The dead who slept there were dead indeed, without the least
+resurrection of memory, completely deserted, sharing in the universal
+decay,--unnamed, separated from life forever. From the beehive close by,
+no one came to give new life with tears and offerings to the ephemeral
+personality they once had, to the name which marked them for a moment.
+
+Wreaths hung from the crosses, black and unraveled, with a swarm of
+insects in their fragments. The exuberant vegetation, where no one ever
+passed, stretched in every direction, loosening the tombstones with its
+roots, springing the steps of the resounding stairways. The rain, slowly
+filtering through the ground, had produced hollows. Some of the slabs
+were cracked open, revealing deep holes.
+
+They had to walk carefully, fearing that the hollow ground would
+suddenly open; they had to avoid the depressions where a stone with
+letters of pale gold and noble coats-of-arms lay half on its side.
+
+The painter walked trembling with the sadness of an immense
+disappointment, questioning the value of his greatest interests. And
+this was life! Human beauty ended like this! This was all that the human
+mind came to and here it must stop in all its pride!
+
+"Here it is!" said Cotoner.
+
+They had entered between two rows of tombs so close together that as
+they passed they brushed against the old ornaments which crumbled and
+fell at the touch.
+
+It was a simple tomb, a sort of coffin of white marble which rose a few
+inches above the ground, with an elevation at one end, like the bolster
+of a bed and surmounted by a cross.
+
+Renovales was cold. There was Josephina! He read the inscription several
+times, as if he could not convince himself. It was she; the letters
+reproduced her name, with a brief lament of her inconsolable husband,
+which seemed to him senseless, artificial, disgraceful.
+
+He had come trembling with anxiety at the thought of the terrible moment
+when he should behold Josephina's last resting place. To feel that he
+was near her, to tread upon the ground in which she rested! He would not
+be able to resist this critical moment, he would weep like a child, he
+would fall on his knees, sobbing in deadly anguish.
+
+Well, he was there; the tomb was before his eyes and still, they were
+dry; they looked about coldly in surprise.
+
+She was there! He knew it from his friend's statement, from the
+declamatory inscription on the tomb, but nothing warned him of her
+presence. He remained indifferent, looking curiously at the adjoining
+graves, filled with a monstrous desire to laugh, seeing in death only
+his sardonic buffoon's mask.
+
+At one side, a gentleman who rested under the endless list of his titles
+and honors, a sort of Count of Alberca, who had fallen asleep in the
+solemnity of his greatness, waiting for the angel's trumpet-blast to
+appear before the Lord with all his parchments and crosses. On the
+other, a general who rotted under a marble slab, engraved with cannon,
+guns and banners, as though he hoped to terrify death. In what ludicrous
+promiscuity Josephina had come to sleep her last sleep, mingled with,
+forms she had not known in life! They were her eternal, her final
+lovers; they carried her off from his very presence and forever,
+indifferent to the pressing concerns of the living. Oh, Death! What a
+cruel mocker! The earth! How cold and cynical!
+
+He was sad and disgusted at human insignificance--but he did not weep.
+He saw only the external and material--the form, always the concern of
+his thoughts. Standing before the tomb he felt merely his vulgar
+meanness, with a sort of shame. She was his wife; the wife of a great
+artist.
+
+He thought of the most famous sculptors, all friends of his; he would
+talk to them, they should erect an imposing sepulcher with weeping
+statues, symbolical of fidelity, gentleness and love, a sepulcher worthy
+of the companion of Renovales. And nothing more; his thought went no
+farther; his imagination could not pass beyond the hard marble nor
+penetrate the hidden mystery. The grave was speechless and empty, in the
+air there was nothing which spoke to the soul of the painter.
+
+He remained indifferent, unmoved by any emotion, without ceasing for a
+single moment to see reality. The cemetery was a hideous, gloomy,
+repulsive place, with an odor of decay. Renovales thought he could
+perceive a stench of putrefaction scattered in the wind which bent the
+pointed tops of the cypresses, and swayed the old wreaths and the
+branches of the rose bushes.
+
+He looked at Cotoner with a sort of displeasure. He was to blame for his
+coldness. His presence was a check on him which prevented him from
+showing his feelings. Though a friend, he was a stranger, an obstacle
+between him and the dead. He interfered with that silent dialogue of
+love and forgiveness of which the master had dreamed as he came. He
+would come back alone. Perhaps the cemetery would be different in
+solitude.
+
+And he came back; he came back the next day. The keeper greeted him with
+a smile, realizing that he was a profitable visitor.
+
+The cemetery seemed larger, more imposing in the silence of the bright,
+quiet morning. He had no one to talk with; he heard no human sound but
+that of his own steps. He went up stairways, crossed galleries, leaving
+behind him his indifference, thinking anxiously that every step took him
+farther from the living, that the gate with its greedy keeper was
+already far away and that he was the only living being, the only one who
+thought and could feel fear in the mournful city of thousands and
+thousands of beings, wrapped in a mystery which made them imposing amid
+the strange, dull sounds of the land beyond that terrifies with the
+blackness of its bottomless abyss.
+
+When he reached Josephina's grave, he took off his hat.
+
+No one. The trees and the rose bushes trembled in the wind among the
+cross paths. Some birds were twittering above him in an acacia, and the
+sound of life, disturbing the rustling of the solitary vegetation, shed
+a certain calm over the painter's spirit, blotted out the childish fear
+he had felt before he reached there, as he crossed the echoing pavements
+of the colonnades.
+
+For a long time he remained motionless, absorbed in the contemplation of
+that marble case obliquely cut by a ray of sunlight, one part golden,
+the other blue in the shadow. Suddenly he shivered, as if he had
+awakened at the sound of a voice,--his own. He was talking, aloud,
+driven to cry out his thoughts, to stir this deathly silence with
+something that meant life.
+
+"Josephina. It is I. Do you forgive me?"
+
+It was a childish longing to hear the voice from beyond that might pour
+on his soul a balm of forgiveness and forgetting; a desire of humbling
+himself, of weeping, of having her listen to him, smile to him from the
+depth of the void, at the great revolution which had been carried out in
+his spirit. He wanted to tell her--and he did tell her silently with the
+speech of his feelings--that he loved her, that he had resuscitated her
+in his thoughts, now that he had lost her forever, with a love which he
+had never had for her in her earthly life. He felt ashamed before her
+grave; ashamed of the difference of their fates.
+
+He begged her forgiveness for living, for still feeling vigorous and
+young, for now loving her without reality, in a wild hope, when he had
+been cold and indifferent at her departure, with his thoughts on another
+woman, hoping for her death with criminal craving. Wretch! And he was
+still alive! And she, so kind, so sweet, buried forever, lost in the
+depths of eternal, ruthless death!
+
+He wept; at last he wept those hot, sincere tears which compel
+forgiveness. It was the weeping which he had so long desired. Now he
+felt that they approached each other, that they were almost together,
+separated only by a strip of marble and a little earth. His fancy saw
+her poor remains and in their decay he loved them, he worshiped them
+with a calm passion that rose above earthly miseries. Nothing which had
+once been Josephina's could cause him repugnance or horror. If he could
+but open that white case! If he could kiss her, take her ashes with him,
+that they might go with him on his pilgrimage, like the household gods
+of the ancients! He no longer saw the cemetery, he did not hear the
+birds nor the rustling of the branches; he seemed to live in a cloud,
+looking only at that white grave, the marble slab,--the last resting
+place of his beloved.
+
+She forgave him; her body rose before him, such as it had been in her
+youth, as he had painted it. Her deep eyes were fixed on his, eyes that
+shone with love. He seemed to hear her childish voice laughing, admiring
+little trifles, as in the happy days. It was a resurrection,--the image
+of the dead woman was before him, formed no doubt by the invisible atoms
+of her being which floated over her grave, by something of the essence
+of her life which still fluttered around the material remains, reluctant
+to say farewell before they started on the way that leads to the depths
+of the infinite.
+
+His tears continued to fall in the silence, in sweet relief; his voice,
+broken by sobs, stilled the birds with fear. "Josephina! Josephina!" And
+the echo answered with dull, mocking cries, from the smooth walls of the
+mausoleums, from the invisible end of the colonnades.
+
+The artist could not resist the temptation to step over the rusted
+chains which surrounded the grave. To feel her nearer! To overcome the
+short distance which separated them! To mock death with a loving kiss of
+intense gratitude for forgiveness!
+
+The huge frame of the master covered the slab of marble, his arms
+encircled it as if he would pick it up from the ground and carry it away
+with him. His lips eagerly sought the highest part of the stone.
+
+He wished to find the spot which covered her face and he began to kiss
+it, moving his head as if he were going to dash it against the marble.
+
+A sensation of stone, warmed by the sun, on his lips; a taste of dust,
+insipid and repulsive in his mouth. Renovales sat up, rose to his feet
+as if he had awakened, as if the cemetery, until then invisible, was
+suddenly restored to reality. The faint odor of decay once more struck
+him.
+
+Now he saw the grave, as he had seen it the day before. He no longer
+wept. The immense disappointment dried his tears, though within him he
+felt the longing for weeping increased. Horrible awakening! Josephina
+was not there; only the void was about him. It was useless to seek the
+past in the field of death. Memories could not be aroused in that cold
+ground, stirred by worms and decay. Oh, where had he come to seek his
+dreams! From what a foul dunghill he had tried to raise the roses of his
+memories!
+
+In fancy he saw her beneath that repugnant marble in all the
+repulsiveness of death, and this vision left him cold, indifferent. What
+had he to do with such wretchedness? No; Josephina was not there. She
+was truly dead, and if he ever was to see her it would not be beside her
+grave.
+
+Once more he wept--not with external tears but within; he mourned the
+bitterness of solitude, the inability to exchange a single thought with
+her. He had so many things to tell her which were burning his soul! How
+he would talk with her, if some mysterious power would bring her back
+for an instant. He would implore her forgiveness; he would throw himself
+at her feet, lamenting the error of his life, the painful deceit of
+having remained beside her, indifferent, fostering hopes which had no
+fulfillment, only to groan now in the torment of irreparable loss, with
+a mad, thirsting love which worshiped the woman in death after scoring
+her in life.
+
+He would swear a thousand times the truth of this posthumous worship,
+this desire aroused by death. And then he would lay her once more in her
+eternal bed, and would depart in peace after his wild confession.
+
+But it was impossible. The silence between them would last forever. He
+must remain for all eternity with this confession of his thoughts,
+unable to tell it to her, crushed beneath its weight. She had gone away
+with rancor and scorn in her soul, forgetting their first love, and she
+would never know that it had blossomed once more after her death.
+
+She could not cast one glance back; she did not exist; she would never
+again exist. All that he was doing and thinking, the sleepless nights
+when he called to her in loving appeal, the long hours when he stood
+gazing at her pictures,--all would be unknown to her. And when he died
+in his turn, the silence and loneliness would be still greater. The
+things which he had been unable to tell her would die with him and they
+would both crumble away in the earth, strangers to each other,
+prolonging their grievous error in eternity, unable to approach each
+other, or see each other, without a saving word, condemned to the
+fearful, unbounded void, over whose limitless firmament passed unnoticed
+the desires and griefs of men.
+
+The unhappy artist walked up and down enraged at his impotence. What
+cruelty surrounded them? What dark, hard-hearted, implacable mockery was
+that which drove them toward one another and then separated them
+forever, forever! forbidding them to exchange a look of forgiveness, a
+word to rectify their errors and to permit them to return to their
+eternal sleep with new peace?
+
+Lies--deceit that hovers about man, like a protecting atmosphere that
+shields him in his path through the void of life. That grave with its
+inscription was a lie; she was not there; it contained merely a few
+remnants, like those of all the others, which no one could recognize,
+not even he, who had loved her so dearly.
+
+His despair made him lift his eyes to the pure, shining sky. Ah, the
+heavens! A lie, too! That heavenly blue with its golden rays and
+fanciful clouds was an imperceptible film, an illusion of the eyes.
+Beyond the deceitful web which wraps the earth was the true heaven,
+endless space, and it was black, ominously obscure, with the sputtering
+spark of burning tears, of infinite worlds, little lamps of eternity in
+whose flame lived other swarms of invisible atoms, and the icy, blind,
+and cruel soul of shadowy space laughed at their passions and longings,
+at the lies they fabricated incessantly to protect their ephemeral
+existence, striving to prolong it with the illusion of an immortal soul.
+
+All were lies which death came to unmask, interrupting men's course on
+the pleasant path of their illusions, throwing them out of it with as
+much indifference as their feet had crushed and driven to flight the
+lines of ants which advanced amid the grass that was sowed with bony
+remains.
+
+Renovales was forced to flee. What was he doing there? What did that
+deserted, empty spot of earth mean to him? Before he went away, with the
+firm determination not to return again, he looked around the grave for
+a flower, a few blades of grass, something to take with him as a
+remembrance. No, Josephina was not there; he was sure, but like a lover,
+he felt that longing, that passionate respect for anything which the
+woman he loves had touched.
+
+He scorned a cluster of wild-flowers which grew in abundance at the foot
+of the grave. He wanted them from near the head and he picked a few
+white buds close to the cross, thinking that perhaps their roots had
+touched her face, that they preserved in their petals something of her
+eyes, of her lips.
+
+He went home downcast and sad, with a void in his mind and death in his
+soul.
+
+But in the warm air of the house, his love came forth to meet him; he
+saw her beside him, smiling from the walls, rising out of the great
+canvases. Renovales felt a warm breath on his face, as if those pictures
+were breathing at once, filling the house with the essence of memories
+which seemed to float in the atmosphere. Everything spoke to him of her,
+everything was filled with that vague perfume of the past. Over there on
+the graveyard hill was the wretched perishable covering. He would not
+return. What was the use? He felt her around him, all that was left of
+her in the world was enclosed in the house, as the strong odor remains
+in a broken, forgotten perfume bottle. No, not in the house. She was in
+him, he felt her presence within him, like those wandering souls of the
+legends who took refuge in another's body, struggling to share the
+dwelling with the soul which was mistress of the body. They had not
+lived in vain so many years together--at first united by love and
+afterward by habit. For half a lifetime, their bodies had slept in close
+contact, exchanging through their open pores that warmth which is like
+the breath of the soul. She had taken away a part of the artist's life.
+In her remains, crumbling in the lonely cemetery, there was a part of
+the master and he, in turn, felt something strange and mysterious which
+chained him to her memory, which made him always long for that body--the
+complement of his own--which had already vanished in the void.
+
+Renovales shut himself up in the house, with a taciturn air and a gloomy
+expression which terrified his valet. If Senor Cotoner came, he was to
+tell him that the master had gone out. If letters came from the
+countess, he could leave them in an old terra-cotta jar in the anteroom,
+where the neglected calling cards were piling up. If it was she who
+came, he was to close the door. He did not want anything to distract
+him. Dinner should be served in the studio.
+
+And he worked alone, without a model, with a tenacity which kept him
+standing before the canvas until it was dark. Sometimes, when the
+servant entered at nightfall, he found the luncheon untouched on the
+table. In the evening the master ate in silence in the dining-room, from
+sheer animal necessity, not seeing what he was eating, his eyes gazing
+into space.
+
+Cotoner, somewhat piqued at this unusual regime which prevented him from
+entering the studio, would call in the evening and try in vain to
+interest him with news of the world outside. He observed in the master's
+eyes a strange light, a gleam of insanity.
+
+"How goes the work?"
+
+Renovales answered vaguely. He could see it soon--in a few days.
+
+His expression of indifference was repeated when he heard the Countess
+of Alberca mentioned. Cotoner described her alarm and astonishment at
+the master's behavior. She had sent for him to find out about Mariano,
+to complain, with tears in her eyes, of his absence. She had twice been
+to the door of his house and had not been able to get in; she
+complained of the servant and that mysterious work. At least he ought to
+write to her, answer her letters, full of tender laments, which she did
+not suspect were lying unopened and neglected in a pile of yellow cards.
+The artist listened to this with a shrug of the shoulders as if he was
+hearing about the sorrows of a distant planet.
+
+"Let's go and see Milita," he said. "There isn't any opera to-night."
+
+In his retirement the only thing which connected him with the outside
+world was his desire to see his daughter, to talk to her, as if he loved
+her with new affection. She was his Josephina's flesh, she had lived in
+her. She was healthy and strong, like him, nothing in her appearance
+reminded him of the other, but her sex bound her closely with the
+beloved image of her mother.
+
+He listened to Milita with smiles of pleasure, grateful for the interest
+she manifested in his health.
+
+"Are you ill, papa? You look poorly. I don't like your appearance. You
+are working too much."
+
+But he calmed her, swinging his strong arms, swelling out his lusty
+chest. He had never felt better. And with the minuteness of a
+good-natured grandfather he inquired about all the little displeasures
+of her life. Her husband spent the day with his friends. She grew tired
+of staying at home and her only amusement was making calls or going
+shopping. And after that came a complaint, always the same, which the
+father divined at her first words. Lopez de Sosa was selfish, niggardly
+toward her. His spendthrift habits never went beyond his own pleasures
+and his own person; he economized in his wife's expenses. He loved her
+in spite of that. Milita did not venture to deny it; no mistresses or
+unfaithfulness. She would be likely to stand that! But he had no money
+except for his horses and automobiles; she even suspected that he was
+gambling, and his poor wife lived without a thing to her back, and had
+to weep her requests every time she received a bill, little trifles of a
+thousand pesetas or two.
+
+The father was as generous to her as a lover. He felt like pouring at
+her feet all that he had piled up in long years of labor. She must live
+in happiness, since she loved her husband! Her worries made him smile
+scornfully. Money! Josephina's daughter sad because she needed things,
+when in his house there were so many dirty, insignificant papers which
+he had worked so hard to win and which he now looked at with
+indifference! He always went away from these visits amid hugs and a
+shower of kisses from that big girl who expressed her joy by shaking him
+disrespectfully, as if he were a child.
+
+"Papa, dear, how good you are! How I love you!"
+
+One night as he left his daughter's house with Cotoner, he said
+mysteriously:
+
+"Come in the morning, I will show it to you. It isn't finished but I
+want you to see it. Just you. No one can judge better."
+
+Then he added with the satisfaction of an artist:
+
+"Once I could paint only what I saw. Now I am different. It has cost me
+a good deal, but you shall judge."
+
+And in his voice there was the joy of difficulties overcome, the
+certainty that he had produced a great work.
+
+Cotoner came the next day, with the haste of curiosity, and entered the
+studio closed to others.
+
+"Look!" said the master with a proud gesture.
+
+His friend looked. Opposite the window was a canvas on an easel; a
+canvas for the most part gray, and on this, confused, interlaced lines
+revealing some hesitancy over the various contours of a body. At one end
+was a spot of color, to which the master pointed--a woman's head which
+stood out sharply on the rough background of the cloth.
+
+Cotoner stood in silent contemplation. Had the great artist really
+painted that? He did not see the master's hand. Although he was an
+unimportant painter, he had a good eye, and he saw in the canvas
+hesitancy, fear, awkwardness, the struggle with something unreal which
+was beyond his reach, which refused to enter the mold of form. He was
+struck by the lack of likeness, by the forced exaggeration of the
+strokes; the eyes unnaturally large, the tiny mouth, almost a point, the
+bright skin with its supernatural pallor. Only in the pupils of the eyes
+was there something remarkable--a glance that came from afar, an
+extraordinary light which seemed to pass through the canvas.
+
+"It has cost me a great deal. No work ever made me suffer so. This is
+only the head; the easiest part. The body will come later; a divine
+nude, such as has never been seen. And only you shall see it, only you!"
+
+The Bohemian no longer looked at the picture. He was gazing at the
+master, astonished at the work, disconcerted by its mystery.
+
+"You see, without a model. Without the real before me," continued the
+master. "_They_ were all the guide I had; but it is my best, my supreme
+work."
+
+_They_ were all the portraits of the dead woman, taken down from the
+walls and placed on easels or chairs in a close circle around the
+canvas.
+
+His friend could not contain his astonishment, he could not pretend any
+longer, overcome by surprise.
+
+"Oh, but it is---- But you have been trying to paint Josephina!"
+
+Renovales started back violently.
+
+"Josephina, yes. Who else should it be? Where are your eyes?"
+
+And his angry glance flashed at Cotoner.
+
+The latter looked at the head again. Yes, it was she, with a beauty that
+was not of this world,--uncanny, spiritualized, as if it belonged to a
+new humanity, free from coarse necessities, in which the last traces of
+animal descent have died out. He gazed at the numerous portraits of
+other times and recognized parts of them in the new work, but animated
+by a light which came from within and changed the value of the colors,
+giving to the face a strange unfamiliarity.
+
+"You recognize her at last!" said the master, anxiously following the
+impressions of his work in the eyes of his friend. "Is it she? Tell me,
+don't you think it is like her?"
+
+Cotoner lied compassionately. Yes, it was she, at last he saw her well
+enough. She, but more beautiful than in life. Josephina had never looked
+like that.
+
+Now it was Renovales who looked with surprise and pity. Poor Cotoner!
+Unhappy failure--pariah of art, who could not rise above the nameless
+crowd and whose only feeling was in his stomach! What did he know about
+such things? What was the use of asking his opinion?
+
+He had not recognized Josephina, and nevertheless this canvas was his
+best portrait, the most exact.
+
+Renovales bore her within him, he saw her merely by retiring into his
+thoughts. No one could know her better than he. The rest had forgotten
+her. That was the way he saw her and that was what she had been.
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+The Countess of Alberca succeeded in making her way, one afternoon, to
+the master's studio.
+
+The servant saw her arrive as usual in a cab, cross the garden, come up
+the steps, and enter the reception room with the hasty step of a
+resolute woman who goes straight ahead without hesitating. He tried to
+block her way respectfully, going from side to side, meeting her every
+time she started to one side to pass this obstacle. The master was
+working! The master was not receiving callers! It was a strict order; he
+could not make an exception! But she continued ahead with a frown, a
+flash of cold wrath in her eyes, an evident determination to strike down
+the servant, if it was necessary, and to pass over his body.
+
+"Come, my good man, get out of the way."
+
+And her haughty, irritated accent made the poor servant tremble and at a
+loss to stop this invasion of rustling skirts and strong perfumes. In
+one of her evolutions the fair lady ran into an Italian mosaic table, on
+the center of which was the old jar. Her glance fell instinctively to
+the bottom of the jar.
+
+It was only an instant, but enough for her woman's curiosity to
+recognize the blue envelopes with white borders, whose sealed ends stuck
+out, untouched, from the pile of cards. The last straw! Her paleness
+grew intense, almost greenish, and she started forward with such a rush
+that the servant could not stop her and was left behind her, dejected,
+confused, fearful of his master's wrath.
+
+Renovales, alarmed by the sharp click of heels on the hard floor, and
+the rustling of skirts, turned toward the door just as the countess made
+her entrance with a dramatic expression.
+
+"It's me."
+
+"You? You, dear?"
+
+Excitement, surprise, fear made the master stammer.
+
+"Sit down," he said coldly.
+
+She sat down on a couch and the artist remained standing in front of
+her.
+
+They looked at each other as if they did not recognize each other after
+this absence of weeks which weighed on their memories as if it were of
+years.
+
+Renovales looked at her coldly, without the least tremble of desire, as
+if it were an ordinary visitor whom he must get rid of as soon as
+possible. He was surprised at her greenish pallor, at her mouth, drawn
+with irritation, at her hard eyes which flashed yellow flames, at her
+nose which curved down to her upper lip. She was angry, but when her
+eyes fell on him, they lost their hardness.
+
+Her woman's instinct was calmed when she gazed at him. He, too, looked
+different in the carelessness of the seclusion; his hair tangled,
+revealing the preoccupation, the fixed, absorbing idea, which made him
+neglect the neatness of his person.
+
+Her jealousy vanished instantly, her cruel suspicion that she would
+surprise him in love with another woman, with the fickleness of an
+artist. She knew the external evidence of love, the necessity a man
+feels of making himself attractive, refining the care of his dress.
+
+She surveyed his neglect with satisfaction, noticing his dirty clothes,
+his long fingernails, stained with paint, all the details which revealed
+lack of tidiness, forgetfulness of his person. No doubt it was a passing
+artist's whim, a craze for work, but they did not reveal what she had
+suspected.
+
+In spite of this calming certainty, as Concha was ready to shed the
+tears which were all prepared, waiting impatiently on the edge of her
+eyelids, she raised her hands to her eyes, curling up on one end of the
+couch, with a tragic expression. She was very unhappy; she was suffering
+terribly. She had passed several horrible weeks. What was the matter?
+Why had he disappeared without a word of explanation, when she loved him
+more than ever, when she was ready to give up everything, to cause a
+perfect scandal, by coming to live with him, as his companion, his
+slave? And her letters, her poor letters, neglected, unopened, as if
+they were annoying requests for alms. She had spent the nights awake,
+putting her whole soul into their pages! And in her accent there was a
+tremble of literary pique, of bitterness, that all the pretty things,
+which she wrote down with a smile of satisfaction after long reflection,
+remained unknown. Men! Their selfishness and cruelty! How stupid women
+were to worship them!
+
+She continued to weep and Renovales looked at her as if she were another
+woman. She seemed ridiculous to him in that grief, which distorted her
+face, which made her ugly, destroying her smiling, doll-like
+impassibility.
+
+He tried to offer excuses, that he might not seem cruel by keeping
+silent, but they lacked warmth and the desire to carry conviction. He
+was working hard; it was time for him to return to his former life of
+creative activity. She forgot that he was an artist, a master of some
+reputation, who had his duty to the public. He was not like those young
+fops who could devote the whole day to her and pass their life at her
+feet, like enamored pages.
+
+"We must be serious, Concha," he added with pedantic coldness. "Life is
+not play. I must work and I am working. I haven't been out of here for
+I don't know how many days."
+
+She stood up angrily, took her hands from her eyes, looked at him,
+rebuking him. He lied; he had been out and it had never occurred to him
+to come to her house for a moment.
+
+"Just to say 'Good morning,' nothing more. So that I may see you for an
+instant, Mariano, long enough to be sure that you are the same, that you
+still love me. But you have gone out often; you have been seen. I have
+my detectives who tell me everything. You are too well known to pass
+unnoticed. You have been in the Museo del Prado mornings. You have been
+seen gazing at a picture of Goya's, a nude, for hours at a time, like an
+idiot. Your hobby is coming back again, Mariano! And it hasn't occurred
+to you to come and see me; you haven't answered my letters. You feel
+proud, it seems, content with being loved, and submit to being worshiped
+like an idol, certain that the more uncivil you are, the more you will
+be loved. Oh, these men! These artists!"
+
+She sobbed, but her voice no longer preserved the irritated tone of the
+first few moments. The certainty that she did not have to struggle with
+the influence of another woman softened her pride, leaving in her only
+the gentle complaint of a victim who is eager to sacrifice herself anew.
+
+"But sit down," she exclaimed amid her sobs, pointing to a place on the
+couch beside her. "Don't stand up. You look as if you wanted me to go
+away."
+
+The painter sat down timidly, taking care not to touch her, avoiding
+those hands which reached out to him, longing for a pretext to seize
+him. He saw her desire to weep on his shoulder, to forget everything,
+and to banish her last tears with a smile. That was what always
+happened, but Renovales, knowing the game, drew back roughly. That must
+not begin again; it could, not be repeated, even if he wanted to. He
+must tell her the truth at any cost, end it forever, throw off the
+burden from his shoulders.
+
+He spoke hoarsely, stammering, with his eyes on the floor, not daring to
+lift them for fear of meeting Concha's which he felt were fixed upon
+him.
+
+For several days he had been meaning to write to her. He had been afraid
+that he might not express his ideas clearly and so he had put off the
+letter until the next day. Now he was glad she had come; he rejoiced at
+the weakness of his valet, in letting her enter.
+
+They must talk like good comrades who examine the future together. It
+was time to put an end to their folly. They would be what Concha once
+desired, friends--good friends. She was beautiful; she still had the
+freshness of youth, but time leaves its mark, and he felt that he was
+getting old; he looked at life from a height, as we look at the water of
+a stream, without dipping into it.
+
+Concha listened to him in astonishment, refusing to understand his
+words. What did these scruples mean? After some digressions, the painter
+spoke remorsefully of his friend, the Count of Alberca, a man whom he
+respected for his very guilelessness. His conscience rose in protest at
+the simple admiration of the good man. This daring deceit in his own
+house, under his own roof, was infamous. He could not go on; they must
+purify themselves from the past by being good friends, must say good-by
+as lovers, without spite or antipathy, grateful to each other for the
+happy past, taking with them, like dead lovers, their pleasant memories.
+
+Concha's laugh, nervous, sarcastic, insolent, interrupted the artist.
+Her cruel spirit of fun was aroused at the thought that her husband was
+the pretext of this break. Her husband! And once more she began to laugh
+uproariously, revealing the count's insignificance, the absolute lack
+of respect which he inspired in his wife, or her habit of adjusting her
+life as her fancy dictated, with never a thought of what that man might
+say or think. Her husband did not exist for her; she never feared him;
+she had never thought that he might serve as an obstacle, and yet her
+lover spoke of him, presented _him_ as a justification for leaving her!
+
+"My husband!" she repeated amid the peals of her cruel laughter. "Poor
+thing! Leave him in peace; he has nothing to do with us. Don't lie;
+don't be a coward. Speak. You've something else on your mind. I don't
+know what it is; but I have a presentiment, I see it from here. If you
+loved another woman! If you loved another woman!"
+
+But she broke off this threatening exclamation. She needed only to look
+at him to be convinced that it was impossible. His body was not perfumed
+with love; everything about him revealed calm peace, without interests
+or desires. Perhaps it was a whim of his fancy, some unbalanced caprice
+which led him to repel her. And encouraged by this belief, she relaxed,
+forgetting her anger, speaking to him affectionately, caressing him with
+a fervor in which there was something at once of the mother and of the
+mistress.
+
+Renovales suddenly saw her beside him with her arms around his neck,
+burying her hands in his tangled hair.
+
+She was not proud; men worshiped her, but her heart, her body, all of
+her belonged to the master, the ungrateful brute, who returned so ill
+her affection that she was getting old with her trouble.
+
+Suddenly filled with tenderness, she kissed his forehead generously and
+purely. Poor boy! He was working so hard! The only thing the matter was
+that he was tired out, distracted with too much painting. He must leave
+his brushes alone, live, love her, be happy, rest his wrinkled forehead
+behind which, like a curtain, an invisible world passed and repassed in
+perpetual revolution.
+
+"Let me kiss your pretty forehead again, so that the hobgoblins within
+may be silent and sleep."
+
+And she kissed once more his _pretty_ forehead, delighting in caressing
+with her lips the furrows and prominences of its irregular surface,
+rough as volcanic ground.
+
+For a long time her wheedling voice, with an exaggerated childish lisp,
+sounded in the silence of the studio. She was jealous of painting, the
+cruel mistress, exacting and repugnant, who seemed to drive her poor
+baby mad. One of these days, master, the studio would catch on fire
+together with all its pictures. She tried to draw him to her, to make
+him sit on her lap, so that she might rock him like a child.
+
+"Look here, Mariano, dear. Laugh for your Concha. Laugh, you big stupid!
+Laugh, or I'll whip you."
+
+He laughed, but it was forced. He tried to resist her fondling, tired of
+those childish tricks which once were his delight. He remained
+indifferent to those hands, those lips, to the warmth of that body which
+rubbed against him without awakening the least desire. And he had loved
+that woman! For her he had committed the terrible, irreparable crime
+which would make him drag the chain of remorse forever! What surprises
+life has in store!
+
+The painter's coldness finally had its effect on the Alberca woman. She
+seemed to awaken from the dream, in which she was lulling herself. She
+drew back from her lover, and looked at him fixedly with imperious eyes,
+in which a spark of pride was once more beginning to flash.
+
+"Say that you love me! Say it at once! I need it!"
+
+But in vain did she show her authority; in vain she brought her eyes
+close to him, as if she wished to look within him. The artist smiled
+faintly, murmured evasive words, refused to comply with her demands.
+
+"Say it out loud, so that I can hear it. Say that you love me. Call me
+Phryne, as you used to when you worshiped me on your knees, kissing my
+body!"
+
+He said nothing. He hung his head in shame at the memory, so as not to
+see her.
+
+The countess stood up nervously. In her anger, she drew back to the
+middle of the studio, her hands clenched, her lips quivering, her eyes
+flashing. She wanted to destroy something, to fall on the floor in a
+convulsion. She hesitated whether to break an Arabic amphora close by,
+or to fall on that bowed head and scratch it with her nails. Wretch! She
+had loved him so dearly; she still cared for him so, feeling bound to
+him by both vanity and habit!
+
+"Say whether you love me," she cried. "Say it once and for all! Yes or
+no?"
+
+Still she obtained no answer. The silence was trying. Once more she
+believed there was another love, a woman who had come to occupy her
+place. But who was it? Where could he have found her? Her woman's
+instinct made her turn her head and glance into the next studio and
+beyond into the last, the real workshop of the master. Warned by a
+mysterious intuition, she started to run toward it. There! Perhaps
+there! The painter's steps sounded behind her. He had started from his
+dejection when he saw her fleeing; he followed her in a frenzy of fear.
+Concha foresaw that she was going to know the truth; a cruel truth with
+all the crudeness of a discovery in broad daylight. She stopped,
+scowling with a mental effort before that portrait which seemed to
+dominate the studio, occupying the best easel, in the most advantageous
+position, in spite of the solitary gray of its canvas.
+
+The master saw in Concha's face the same expression of doubt and
+surprise which he had seen in Cotoner's. Who was that? But the
+hesitation was shorter; her woman's pride sharpened her senses. She saw
+beyond that unrecognizable head the circle of older portraits which
+seemed to guard it.
+
+Ah! The immense surprise in her eyes; the cold astonishment in the
+glance she fixed on the painter as she surveyed him from head to foot!
+
+"Is it Josephina?"
+
+He bowed his head in mute assent. But his silence seemed to him
+cowardly; he felt that he must cry out in the presence of those
+canvases, what he had not dared to say outside. It was a longing to
+flatter the dead woman, to implore her forgiveness, by confessing his
+hopeless love.
+
+"Yes, it is Josephina."
+
+And he said it with spirit, going forward a step, looking at Concha as
+if she were an enemy, with a sort of hostility in his eyes which did not
+escape her notice.
+
+They did not say anything more. The countess could not speak. Her
+surprise passed the limits of the probable, the known.
+
+In love with his wife,--and after she was dead! Shut up like a hermit in
+order to paint her with a beauty which she had never had. Life brings
+surprises, but this surely had never been seen before.
+
+She felt as if she were falling, falling, driven by astonishment and, at
+the end of the fall, she found that she was changed, without a complaint
+or pang of grief. Everything about her seemed strange--the room, the
+man, the pictures. This whole affair went beyond her power of
+conception. Had she found a woman there, it would have made her weep and
+shriek with grief, roll on the floor, love the master still more with
+the stimulus of jealousy. But to find that her rival was a dead woman!
+And more than that--his wife! It seemed supremely ridiculous, she felt a
+mad desire to laugh. But she did not laugh. She recalled the unusual
+expression she had noticed on the master's face, when she entered the
+studio; she thought that now she saw in his eyes a spark of that same
+gleam.
+
+Suddenly she felt afraid; afraid of the man who looked at her in silence
+as if he did not know her and toward whom she felt the same strangeness.
+
+Still she had for him a glance of sympathy, of that tenderness which
+every woman feels in the presence of unhappiness, even if it afflicts a
+stranger. Poor Mariano! All was over between them; she took care not to
+speak intimately to him; she held out her gloved hand with the gesture
+of an unapproachable lady. For a long time they stood in this position,
+speaking only with their eyes.
+
+"Good-by, master; take care of yourself! Don't bother to come with me. I
+know the way. Go on with your work. Paint----"
+
+Her heels clicked nervously on the waxed floor as she left the room,
+which she was never to enter again. The swish of her skirts scattered
+their wake of perfumes in the studio for the last time.
+
+Renovales breathed more freely when he was left alone. He had ended
+forever the error of his life. The only thing in this visit that left a
+sting was the countess's hesitation before the portrait. She had
+recognized it sooner than Cotoner, but she too had hesitated. No one
+remembered Josephina; he alone kept her image.
+
+That same afternoon, before his old friend came, the master received
+another call. His daughter appeared in the studio. Renovates had
+divined that it was she before she entered, by the whirl of joy and
+overflowing life which seemed to precede her.
+
+She had come to see him; she had promised him a visit months ago. And
+her father smiled indulgently, recalling some of her complaints when he
+last visited her. Just to see him?
+
+Milita pretended to be absorbed in examining the studio which she had
+not entered for a long time.
+
+"Look!" she exclaimed. "Why, it's mamma!"
+
+She looked at the picture with astonishment, but the master seemed
+pleased at the readiness with which she had recognized her. At last, his
+daughter! The instinct of blood! The poor master did not see the hasty
+glance at the other portraits which had guided the girl in her
+induction.
+
+"Do you like it? Is it she?" he asked as anxiously as a novice.
+
+Milita answered rather vaguely. Yes, it was good; perhaps a little more
+beautiful than she was. She never knew her like that.
+
+"That is true," said the master, "You never saw her in her good days.
+But she was like that before you were born. Your poor mother was very
+beautiful."
+
+But his daughter did not manifest any great enthusiasm over the picture.
+It seemed strange to her. Why was the head at one end of the canvas?
+What was he going to add? What did those lines mean? The master tried to
+explain, almost blushing, afraid to tell his intention to his daughter,
+suddenly overcome by paternal modesty. He was not sure as yet what he
+would do; he had to decide on a dress to suit her. And in a sudden
+access of tenderness, his eyes grew moist and he kissed his daughter.
+
+"Do you remember her well, Milita? She was very good, wasn't she?"
+
+His daughter felt infected by her father's sadness, but only for a
+moment. Her strength, health and joy of life soon threw off these sad
+impressions. Yes, very good. She often thought about her. Perhaps she
+spoke the truth; but these memories were not deep nor painful. Death
+seemed to her a thing without meaning, a remote incident without much
+terror which did not disturb the serene calm of her physical perfection.
+
+"Poor mamma," she added in a forced tone. "It was a relief for her to
+go. Always sick, always sad! With such a life it is better to die!"
+
+In her words there was a trace of bitterness, the memory of her youth,
+spent with that touchy invalid, in an atmosphere made the more
+unpleasant by the hostile chill with which her parents treated each
+other. Besides, her expression was icy. We all must die. The weak must
+go first and leave their place to the strong. It was the unconscious,
+cruel selfishness of health. Renovales suddenly saw his daughter's soul
+through this rent of frankness. The dead woman had known them both. The
+daughter was his, wholly his. He, too, possessed that selfishness in his
+strength which had made him crush weakness and delicacy placed under his
+protection. Poor Josephina had only him left, repentant and adoring. For
+the other people, she had not passed through the world; not even his
+daughter felt any lasting sorrow at her death.
+
+Milita turned her back to the portrait. She forgot her mother and her
+father's work. An artist's hobby! She had come for something else.
+
+She sat down beside him, almost in the same way that another woman had
+sat down, a few hours before. She coaxed him with her rich voice, which
+took on a sort of cat-like purring. Papa,--papa, dear,--she was very
+unhappy. She came to see him, to tell him her troubles.
+
+"Yes, money," said the master, somewhat annoyed at the indifference with
+which she had spoken of her mother.
+
+"Money, papa, you've said it; I told you the other day. But that isn't
+all. Rafael--my husband--I can't stand this sort of life."
+
+And she related all the petty trials of her existence. In order not to
+feel that she was prematurely a widow, she had to go with her husband in
+his automobile and show an interest in his trips which once had amused
+her but now were growing unbearable.
+
+"It's the life of a section-hand, papa, always swallowing dust and
+counting kilometers. When I love Madrid so much! When I can't live out
+of it!"
+
+She had sat down on her father's knees, she talked to him, looking into
+his eyes, smoothing his hair, pulling his mustache, like a mischievous
+child,--almost as the other had.
+
+"Besides, he's stingy; if he had his way, I'd look like a frump. He
+thinks everything is too much. Papa, help me out of this difficulty,
+it's only two thousand pesetas. With that I can get on my feet and then
+I won't bother you with any more loans. Come, that's a dear papa. I need
+them right away, because I waited till the last minute, so as not to
+inconvenience you."
+
+Renovales moved about uneasily under the weight of his daughter, a
+strapping girl who fell on him like a child. Her filial confidences
+annoyed him. Her perfume made him think of that other perfume, which
+disturbed his nights, spreading through the solitude of the rooms. She
+seemed to have inherited her mother's flesh.
+
+He pushed her away roughly, and she took this movement for a refusal.
+Her face grew sad, tears came to her eyes, and her father repented his
+brusqueness. He was surprised at her constant requests for money. What
+did she want it for? He recalled the wedding-presents, that princely
+abundance of clothes and jewels which had been on exhibition in this
+very room. What did she need? But Milita looked at her father in
+astonishment. More than a year had gone by since then. It was clear
+enough that her father was ignorant in such matters. Was she going to
+wear the same gowns, the same hats, the same ornaments for an endless
+length of time, more than twelve months? Horrible! That was too
+commonplace. And overcome at the thought of such a monstrosity, she
+began to shed her tender tears to the great disturbance of the master.
+
+"There, there, Milita, there's no use in crying. What do you want?
+Money? I'll send you all you need to-morrow. I haven't much at the
+house. I shall have to get it at the bank--operations you don't
+understand."
+
+But Milita, encouraged by her victory, insisted on her request with
+desperate obstinacy. He was deceiving her; he would not remember it the
+next day; she knew her father. Besides, she needed the money at
+once,--her honor was at stake (she declared it seriously) if her friends
+discovered that she was in debt.
+
+"This very minute, papa. Don't be horrid. Don't amuse yourself by making
+me worry. You must have money, lots of it, perhaps you have it on you.
+Let's see, you naughty papa, let me search your pockets, let me look at
+your wallet. Don't say no; you have it with you. You have it with you!"
+
+She plunged her hands in her father's breast, unbuttoning his working
+jacket, tickling him to get at the inside pocket. Renovales resisted
+feebly. "You foolish girl. You're wasting your time. Where do you think
+the wallet is? I never carry it in this suit."
+
+"It's here, you fibber," his daughter cried merrily, persisting in her
+search. "I feel it! I have it! Look at it!"
+
+She was right. The painter had forgotten that he had picked it up that
+morning to pay a bill and then had put it absent-mindedly in the pocket
+of his serge coat.
+
+Milita opened it with a greediness that hurt her father. Oh, those
+woman's hands, trembling in the search for money! He grew calmer when he
+thought of the fortune he had amassed, of the different colored papers
+which he kept in his desk. All would be his daughter's and perhaps this
+would save her from the danger toward which her longing to live amid the
+vanities and tinsel of feminine slavery was leading her.
+
+In an instant she had her hands on a number of bills of different
+denominations, forming a roll which she squeezed tight between her
+fingers.
+
+Renovales protested.
+
+"Let me have it, Milita, don't be childish. You're leaving me without a
+cent. I'll send it to you to-morrow; give it up now. It's robbery."
+
+She avoided him; she had stood up; she kept at a distance, raising her
+hand above her hat to save her booty. She laughed boisterously at her
+trick. She did not mean to give him back a single one! She did not know
+how many there were, she would count them at home, she would be out of
+difficulty for the nonce, and the next day she would ask him for what
+was lacking.
+
+The master finally began to laugh, finding her merriment contagious. He
+chased Milita without trying to catch her; he threatened her with mock
+severity, called her a robber, shouting "help," and so they ran from one
+studio to another. Before she disappeared, Milita stopped on the last
+doorsill, raising her gloved finger authoritatively:
+
+"To-morrow, the rest. You mustn't forget. Really, papa, this is very
+important. Good-by; I shall expect you to-morrow."
+
+And she disappeared, leaving in her father some of the merriment with
+which they had chased each other.
+
+The twilight was gloomy. Renovales sat in front of his wife's portrait,
+gazing at that extravagantly beautiful head which seemed to him the most
+faithful of his portraits. His thoughts were lost in the shadow which
+rose from the corners and enveloped the canvases. Only on the windows
+trembled a pale, hazy light, cut across by the black lines of the
+branches outside.
+
+Alone--alone forever. He had the affection of that big girl who had just
+gone away, merry, indifferent to everything which did not flatter her
+youthful vanity, her healthy beauty. He had the devotion of his friend
+Cotoner, who, like an old dog, could not live without seeing him, but
+was incapable of wholly devoting his life to him, and shared it between
+him and other friends, jealous of his Bohemian freedom.
+
+And that was all. Very little.
+
+On the verge of old age, he gazed at a cruel, reddish light which seemed
+to irritate his eyes; the solitary, monotonous road which awaited
+him--and at the end, death! No one was ignorant of that; it was the only
+certainty, and still he had spent the greater part of his life without
+thinking of it, without seeing it.
+
+It was like one of those epidemics in distant lands which destroy
+millions of lives. People talk of it as of a definite fact, but without
+a start of horror, or a tremble of fear. "It is too far away; it will
+take it a long time to reach us."
+
+He had often named Death, but with his lips; his thoughts had not
+grasped the meaning of the word, feeling that he was alive, bound to
+life by his dreams and desires.
+
+Death stood at the end of the road; no one could avoid meeting it, but
+all are long in seeing it. Ambition, desire, love, the cruel animal
+needs distracted man in his course toward it; they were like the woods,
+valleys, blue sky and winding crystal streams which diverted the
+traveler, hiding the boundary of the landscape, the fatal goal, the
+black bottomless gorge to which all roads lead.
+
+He was on the last days' march. The path of his life was growing
+desolate and gloomy; the vegetation was dwindling; the great groves
+diminished into sparse, miserable lichens. From the murky abyss came an
+icy breath; he saw it in the distance, he walked without escape toward
+its gorge. The fields of dreams with their sunlit heights which once
+bounded the horizon, were left behind and it was impossible to return.
+In this path no one retraced his steps.
+
+He had wasted half his life, struggling for wealth and fame, hoping
+sometimes to receive their revenues in the pleasures of love. Die! Who
+thought of that? Then it was a remote, unmeaning threat. He believed
+that he was provided with a mission by Providence. Death would take no
+liberties with him, would not come till his work was finished. He still
+had many things to do. Well, all was done now; human desires did not
+exist for him. He had everything. No longer did fanciful towers rise
+before his steps, for him to assault. On the horizon, free from
+obstacles, appeared the great forgotten,--Death.
+
+He did not want to see it. There was still a long journey on that road
+which might grow longer and longer, according to the strength of the
+traveler, and his legs were still strong.
+
+But, ah, to walk, walk, year after year, with his gaze fixed on that
+murky abyss, contemplating it always at the edge of the horizon, unable
+to escape for an instant the certainty that it was there, was a
+superhuman torture which would force him to hurry his steps, to run in
+order to reach the end as soon as possible. Oh, for deceitful clouds
+which might veil the horizon, concealing the reality which embitters our
+bread, which casts its shadows over our souls and makes us curse the
+futility of our birth! Oh, for lying, pleasant illusions to make a
+paradise rise from the desert shadows of the last journey! Oh, for
+dreams!
+
+And in his mind the poor master enlarged the last fancy of his desire;
+he connected with the beloved likeness of his dead wife all the flights
+of his imagination, longing to infuse into it new life with a part of
+his own. He piled up by handfuls the clay of the past, the mass of
+memory, to make it greater that it might occupy the whole way, shut off
+the horizon like a huge hill, hide till the last moment the murky abyss
+which ended the journey.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+Renovales' behavior was a source of surprise and even scandal for all
+his friends.
+
+The Countess of Alberca took especial care to let every one know that
+her only relation with the painter was a friendship which grew
+constantly colder and more formal.
+
+"He's crazy," she said. "He's finished. There's nothing left of him but
+a memory of what he once was."
+
+Cotoner in his unswerving friendship was indignant at hearing such
+comment on the famous master.
+
+"He isn't drinking. All that people say about him is a lie; the usual
+legend about a celebrated man."
+
+He had his own ideas about Mariano; he knew his longing for a stirring
+life, his desire to imitate the habits of youth in the prime of life,
+with a thirst for all the mysteries which he fancied were hidden in this
+evil life, of which he had heard without ever daring till then to join
+in them.
+
+Cotoner accepted the master's new habits indulgently. Poor fellow!
+
+"You are putting into action the pictures of 'The Rake's Progress,'" he
+said to his friend. "You're going the way of all virtuous men when they
+cease to be so, on the verge of old age. You are making a fool of
+yourself, Mariano."
+
+But his loyalty led him to acquiesce in the new life of the master. At
+last he had given in to his requests and had come to live with him. With
+his few pieces of luggage he occupied a room in the house and cared for
+Renovales with almost paternal solicitude. The Bohemian showed great
+sympathy for him. It was the same old story: "He who does not do it at
+the beginning does it at the end," and Renovales, after a life of hard
+work, was rushing into a life of dissipation with the blindness of a
+youth, admiring vulgar pleasures, clothing them with the most fanciful
+seductions.
+
+Cotoner frequently harassed him with complaints. What had he brought him
+to live at his house for? He deserted him for days at a time; he wanted
+to go out alone; he left him at home like a trusty steward. The old
+Bohemian posted himself minutely on his life. Often the students in the
+Art School, gathered at nightfall beside the entrance to the Academy,
+saw him going down the Calle de Alcala, muffled in his cloak with an
+affected air of mystery that attracted attention.
+
+"There goes Renovales. That one, the one in the cloak."
+
+And they followed him out of curiosity--in his comings and goings
+through the broad street where he circled about like a silent dove as if
+he were waiting for something. Sometimes, no doubt tired of these
+evolutions, he went into a cafe and the curious admirers followed him,
+pressing their faces against the window-panes. They saw him drop into a
+chair, looking vaguely at the glass before him; always the same thing:
+brandy. Suddenly he would drink it at one gulp, pay the waiter and go
+out, with the haste of one who has swallowed a drug. And once more he
+would begin his explorations, peering with greedy eyes at all the women
+who passed alone, turning around to follow the course of run-down heels,
+the flutter of dark and mud-splashed skirts. At last he would start with
+sudden determination, he would disappear almost on the heel of some
+woman always of the same appearance. The boys knew the great artist's
+preference: little, weak, sickly women, graceful as faded flowers, with
+large eyes, dull and sorrowful.
+
+A story of strange mental aberration was forming about him. His enemies
+repeated it in the studios; the throng which cannot imagine that
+celebrated men lead the same life as other people, and like to think
+that they are capricious, tormented by extraordinary habits, began to
+talk with delight about the hobby of the painter Renovales.
+
+In all the houses of prostitution, from the middle class apartments,
+scattered in the most respectable streets, to the damp, ill-smelling
+dens which cast out their wares at night on the Calle de Peligros,
+circulated the story of a certain gentleman, provoking shouts of
+laughter. He always came muffled up mysteriously, following hastily the
+rustle of some poor starched skirts which preceded him. He entered the
+dark doorway with a sort of terror, climbed the winding staircase which
+seemed to smell of the residues of life, hastened the disrobing with
+eager hands, as if he had no time to waste, as if he was afraid of dying
+before he realized his desire, and all at once the poor women who looked
+askance at his feverish silence and the savage hunger which shone in his
+eyes, were tempted to laugh, seeing him drop dejectedly into a chair in
+silence, unmindful of the brutal words which they in their astonishment
+hurled at him; without paying any attention to their gestures and
+invitations, not coming out of his stupor till the woman, cold and
+somewhat offended, started to put on her clothes. "One moment more."
+This scene almost always ended with an expression of disgust, of bitter
+disappointment. Sometimes the poor puppets of flesh thought they saw in
+his eyes a sorrowful expression, as if he were going to weep. Then he
+fled precipitously, hidden under his cloak in sudden shame, with the
+firm determination not to return, to resist that demon of hungry
+curiosity which dwelt within him and could not see a woman's form in the
+street, without feeling a violent desire to disrobe it.
+
+These stories came to Cotoner's ears. Mariano! Mariano! He did not dare
+to rebuke him openly for these shameful nocturnal adventures; he was
+afraid of a violent explosion of anger on the part of the master. He
+must direct him prudently. But what most aroused his old friend's
+censure was the people with whom the artist associated.
+
+This false rejuvenation made him seek the company of the younger men and
+Cotoner cursed roundly when at the close of the theater he found him in
+a cafe, surrounded by his new comrades, all of whom might be his sons.
+Most of them were painters, novices, some with considerable talent,
+others whose only merit was their evil tongue, all of them proud of
+their friendship with the famous man, delighting like pigmies in
+treating him as an equal, jesting over his weaknesses. Great Heavens!
+Some of the bolder even went so far as to call him by his first name,
+treating him like a glorious failure, presuming to make comparisons
+between his paintings and what they would do when they could. "Mariano,
+art moves in different paths, now."
+
+"Aren't you ashamed of yourself!" Cotoner would exclaim. "You look like
+a schoolmaster surrounded by children. You ought to be spanked. A man
+like you tolerating the insolence of those shabby fellows!"
+
+Renovales' good nature was unshaken. They were very interesting; they
+amused him; he found in them the joy of youth. They went together to the
+theaters and music halls, they knew women; they knew where the good
+models were; with them he could enter many places where he would not
+venture to go alone. His years and ugliness passed unnoticed amid that
+youthful merry crowd.
+
+"They are of service to me," the poor man said with a sly wink. "I am
+amused and they tell me lots of things. Besides, this isn't Rome; there
+are hardly any models; it is very difficult to find them and these boys
+are my guides."
+
+And he went on to speak of his great artistic plans, of that picture of
+Phryne, with her divine nakedness, which had once more risen in his
+mind, of the beloved portrait which was still in the same condition as
+his brush had left it when he finished the head.
+
+He was not working. His old energy, which had made painting a necessary
+element in his life, now found vent in words, in the desire to see
+everything, to know "new phases of life."
+
+Soldevilla, his favorite pupil, found himself a target for the master's
+questions when he appeared at rare intervals in the studio.
+
+"You must know good women, Soldevilla: You have been around a great deal
+in spite of that angel face of yours. You must take me with you. You
+must introduce me."
+
+"Master!" the youth would exclaim in surprise, "it isn't yet six months
+since I was married! I never go out at night! How you joke!"
+
+Renovates answered with a scornful glance. A fine life! No youth, no
+joy! He spent all his money on variegated waistcoats and high collars.
+What a perfect ant! He had married a rich woman, since he couldn't catch
+the master's daughter. Besides, he was an ungrateful scamp. Now he was
+joining the master's enemies, convinced that he could get nothing more
+out of him. He scorned him. It was too bad that his protection had
+caused him so much inconvenience! He was no artist.
+
+And the master went back with new affection to his companions, those
+merry youths, slandering and disrespectful as they were. He recognized
+talent in them all.
+
+The gossip about his extraordinary life reached even his daughter, with
+the rapid spread which anything prejudicial to a famous man acquires.
+
+Milita scowled, trying to restrain the laughter which the strangeness of
+this change aroused. Her father becoming a rake!
+
+"Papa! Papa!" she exclaimed in a comic tone of reproach.
+
+And papa made excuses like a naughty, hypocritical little boy,
+increasing by his perturbation his daughter's desire to laugh.
+
+Lopez de Sosa seemed inclined to be indulgent toward his father-in-law.
+Poor old gentleman! All his life working, with a sick wife, who was very
+good and kind, to be sure, but who had embittered his life! She did well
+to die, and the artist did quite as well in making up for the time he
+had lost.
+
+With the instinctive freemasonry of all those who lead an easy, merry
+life, the sport defended his father-in-law, supported him, found him
+more attractive, more congenial, as a result of his new habits. A man
+must not always stay shut up in his studio with the irritated air of a
+prophet, talking about things which nobody would understand.
+
+They met each other in the evening during the last acts at the theaters
+and music halls, when the songs and dances were accompanied by the
+audience with a storm of cries and stamping. They greeted each other,
+the father inquired for Milita, they smiled with the sympathy of two
+good fellows and each went back to his group; the son-in-law to his
+club-mates in a box, still wearing the dress suits of the respectable
+gatherings from which they came--the painter to the orchestra seats
+with the long-haired young fellows who were his escort.
+
+Renovales was gratified to see Lopez de Sosa greeting the most
+fashionable, highest-priced _cocottes_ and smiling to comic-opera stars
+with the familiarity of an old friend.
+
+That boy had excellent connections, and he regarded this as an indirect
+honor to his position as a father.
+
+Cotoner frequently found himself dragged out of his orbit of serious,
+substantial dinners and evening-parties, which he continued to frequent
+in order not to lose his friendships which were his only source of
+income.
+
+"You are coming with me to-night," the master would say mysteriously.
+"We will dine wherever you like, and afterwards I will show you
+something."
+
+And he took him to the theater where he sat restless and impatient until
+the chorus came on the stage. Then he would nudge Cotoner, who was sunk
+in his seat, with his eyes wide open, but asleep inside, in the sweet
+pleasure of good digestion.
+
+"Listen, look! the third from the right, the little girl--the one in the
+yellow shawl!"
+
+"I see her. What about her?" said his friend in a sour voice.
+
+"Look at her closely. Who does she look like? Who does she remind you
+of?"
+
+Cotoner answered with a grunt of indifference. She probably looked like
+her mother. What did he care about such resemblances. But his
+astonishment aroused him from his quiet when he heard Renovales say he
+thought her a rare likeness of his wife, and was indignant at him
+because he did not recognize it.
+
+"Why, Mariano, where are your eyes?" he exclaimed with no less sourness.
+"What resemblance is there between that scraggly girl with her starved
+face and your poor, dead wife. If you see a sorry-looking bean pole you
+will give it a name, Josephina,--and there's nothing more to say."
+
+Although Renovales was at first irritated at his friend's blindness, he
+was finally convinced. He had probably deceived himself, as long as
+Cotoner did not find the likeness. He must remember the dead woman
+better than he himself; love did not disturb _his_ memory.
+
+But a few days later he would once more besiege Cotoner with a
+mysterious air. "I have something to show you." And leaving the company
+of the merry lads who annoyed his old friend, he would take him to a
+music hall and point out another scandalous woman who was kicking a
+fling or doing a _danse du ventre_, and revealed her anemic emaciation
+under a mask of rouge.
+
+"How about this one?" the master would implore, almost in terror as if
+he doubted his own eyes. "Don't you think she looks something like her?
+Doesn't she remind you of her?"
+
+His friend broke out angrily:
+
+"You're crazy. What likeness is there between that poor little woman, so
+good, so sweet and so refined, and this low creature?"
+
+Renovales, after several failures which made him doubt the accuracy of
+his memory, did not dare to consult his friend. As soon as he tried to
+take him to a new show, Cotoner would draw back.
+
+"Another discovery? Come, Mariano, get these ideas out of your head. If
+people found out about it, they would think that you were crazy."
+
+But defying his wrath, the master insisted one evening with great
+obstinacy that he must go with him to see the "Bella Fregolina," a
+Spanish girl, who was singing at a little theater in the low quarter,
+and whose name was displayed in letters a meter high in the shop windows
+of Madrid. He had spent more than two weeks watching her every evening.
+
+"I must have you see her, Pepe. Just for a minute. I beg you. I am sure
+that this time you won't say that I am mistaken."
+
+Cotoner gave in, persuaded by the imploring tone of his friend. They
+waited for the appearance of the "Bella Fregolina" for a long time,
+watching dances and listening to songs accompanied by the howls of the
+audience. The wonder was reserved till the last. At last, with a sort of
+solemnity, amid a murmur of expectation, the orchestra began to play a
+piece well known to all the admirers of the "star," a ray of rosy light
+crossed the little stage and the "Bella" entered.
+
+She was a slight little girl, so thin that she was almost emaciated. Her
+face, of a sweet melancholy beauty, was the most striking thing about
+her. Beneath her black dress, covered with silver threads, which spread
+out like a broad bell, you could see her slender legs, so thin that the
+flesh seemed hardly to cover the bones. Above the lace of her gown her
+skin, painted white, marked the slight curve of her breasts and the
+prominent collar bones. The first thing you saw about her were her eyes,
+large, clear, and girlish, but the eyes of a depraved girl, in which a
+licentious expression flickered, without, however, hurting their pure
+surface. She moved like an overgrown school-girl, arms akimbo, bashful
+and blushing and in this position she sang in a thin, high voice,
+obscene verses which contrasted strangely with her apparent timidity.
+This was her charm and the audience received her atrocious words with
+roars of delight, contenting themselves with this, without demanding
+that she dance, respecting her hieratic stiffness.
+
+When the painter saw her appear he nudged his friend.
+
+He did not dare to speak, waiting for his opinion anxiously. He
+followed his inspection out of the corner of his eye.
+
+His friend was merciful.
+
+"Yes, she is something like her. Her eyes,--figure,--expression; she
+reminds me of her. She is very much, like her. But the monkey face she
+is making now! The words! No, that destroys all likeness."
+
+And as if he were angry that that little girl without any voice and
+without any sense of shame, should be compared to the sweet Josephina,
+he commented with sarcastic admiration on all the cynical expressions
+with which she ended her couplets.
+
+"Very pretty! Very refined!"
+
+But Renovales, deaf to these ironical remarks, absorbed in the
+contemplation of "Fregolina," kept on poking him and whispering:
+
+"It's she, isn't it? Just exactly; the same body. And besides, the girl
+has some talent; she's funny."
+
+Cotoner nodded ironically: "Yes, very." And when he found that Mariano
+wanted to stay for the next act and did not move from his seat, he
+though of leaving him. Finally he stayed, stretching out in his seat
+with the determination to have a nap, lulled by the music and the cries
+of the audience.
+
+An impatient hand aroused him from his comfortable doze. "Pepe, Pepe."
+He shook his head and opened his eyes ill-naturedly. "What's the
+matter?" In Renovales' face he saw a honeyed, treacherous smile, some
+folly that he wanted to propose in the most pleasing manner.
+
+"I thought we might go behind the scenes for a minute: we could see her
+at close range."
+
+His friend answered him indignantly. Mariano thought he was a young
+buck; he forgot how he looked. That woman would laugh at them, she
+would assume the air of the Chaste Susanna, besieged by the two old men.
+
+Renovales was silent, but in a little while he once more aroused his
+friend from his nap.
+
+"You might go in alone, Pepe. You know more about these things than I
+do. You are more daring. You might tell her that I want to paint her
+portrait. Think, a portrait with my signature!"
+
+Cotoner started to laugh, in sheer admiration of the princely simplicity
+with which the master gave him the commission.
+
+"Thank you, sir; I am highly honored by such a favor, but I am not
+going. You confounded fool. Do you suppose that girl knows who Renovales
+is or has ever even heard of his name?"
+
+The master expressed his astonishment with childlike simplicity.
+
+"Man alive. I believe that the name Renovales--that what the papers have
+said--that my portraits---- Be frank, say that you don't want to."
+
+And he was silent, offended at his companion's refusal and his doubt
+that his fame had reached this corner. Friends sometimes abuse us with
+unexpected scorn and great injustice.
+
+At the end of the show the master felt that he must do something, not go
+away without sending the "Bella Fregolina" some evidence of his
+presence. He bought an elaborate basket of flowers from a flower vendor
+who was starting home, discouraged at the poor business. She should
+deliver it immediately to Senorita--"Fregolina."
+
+"Yes, to Pepita," said the woman with a knowing air, as if she were one
+of her friends.
+
+"And tell her it is from Senor Renovales--from Renovales, the painter."
+
+The woman nodded, repeating the name. "Very well, Renovales," just as
+she would have said any other name. And without the least emotion she
+took the five dollars which the painter gave her.
+
+"Five dollars! You idiot," muttered his friend, losing all respect for
+him.
+
+Good Cotoner refused to go with him after that. In vain Renovales talked
+to him enthusiastically every night about that girl, deeply impressed by
+her different impersonations. Now she appeared in a pale pink dress,
+almost like some clothes put away in the closets of his house; now she
+entered in a hat trimmed with flowers and cherries, much larger, but
+still something like a certain straw hat which he could find amid the
+confusion of Josephina's old finery. Oh, how it reminded him of her!
+Every night he was struck with some renewed memory.
+
+Lacking Cotoner's assistance, he went to see the "Bella" with some of
+the young fellows of his disrespectful court. These boys spoke of the
+"star" with respectful scorn, as the fox in the fable gazed at the
+distant grapes, consoling himself at the thought of their sourness. They
+praised her beauty, seen from a distance; according to them she was
+"lily-like"; she had the holy beauty of sin. She was out of their reach;
+she wore costly jewels and according to all reports had influential
+friends, all those young gentlemen in dress clothes who occupied the
+boxes during the last act, and waited for her at the stage door to take
+her to dinner.
+
+Renovales was gnawed with impatience, unable to find a way to meet her.
+Every night he sent his little baskets of flowers, or huge bouquets. The
+"star" must be informed whence these gifts came, for she looked around
+the audience for the ugly elderly gentleman, deigning to grant him a
+smile.
+
+One night the master saw Lopez de Sosa speak to the singer. Perhaps his
+son-in-law was acquainted with her. And boldly as a lover, he waited for
+him when he came out to implore his help.
+
+He wanted to paint her; she was a magnificent model for a certain work
+he had in mind. He said it blushingly, stammering, but Lopez laughed at
+his timidity and seemed disposed to protect him.
+
+"Oh, Pepita? A wonderful woman, in spite of the fact that she is on the
+decline. With all her school-girl face, if you could only see her at a
+party! She drinks like a fish. She's a terror!"
+
+But afterwards, with a serious expression, he explained the
+difficulties. She "belonged" to one of his friends, a lad from the
+provinces who, eager to win notoriety, was losing one-half his fortune
+gambling at the Casino and was calmly letting that girl devour the other
+half,--she gave him some reputation. He would speak to her; they were
+old friends; nothing wrong--eh, father? It would not be hard to persuade
+her. This Pepita had a predilection for anything that was unusual; she
+was rather--romantic. He would explain to her who the great artist was,
+enhancing the honor of acting as his model.
+
+"Don't stint on the money," said the master anxiously. "All that she
+wants. Don't be afraid to be generous."
+
+One morning Renovales called Cotoner to talk to him with wild
+expressions of joy.
+
+"She's going to come! She's going to come this very afternoon!"
+
+The old painter looked surprised.
+
+"Who?"
+
+"The 'Bella Fregolina.' Pepita. My son-in-law tells me he has persuaded
+her. She will come this afternoon at three. He is coming with her
+himself."
+
+Then he cast a worried glance at his workshop. For some time it had been
+deserted; it must be set in order.
+
+And the servant on one side and the two artists on the other, began to
+tidy up the room hastily.
+
+The portraits of Josephina and the canvas with nothing but her head were
+piled up in a corner by the master's feverish hands. What was the use of
+those phantoms when the real thing was going to appear. In their place
+he put a large white canvas, gazing at its untouched surface with
+hopeful eyes. What things he was going to do that afternoon! What a
+power for work he felt!
+
+When the two artists were left alone, Renovales seemed restless,
+dissatisfied, constantly suspecting that something had been overlooked
+for this visit, toward which he looked with chills of anxiety. Flowers;
+they must get some flowers, fill all the old vases in the studio, create
+an atmosphere of delicate perfume.
+
+And Cotoner ran through the garden with the servant, plundered the
+greenhouse and came in with an armful of flowers, obedient and
+submissive as a faithful friend, but with a sarcastic reproach in his
+eyes. All that for the "Bella Fregolina"! The master was cracked; he was
+in his second childhood! If only this visit would cure him of his mania,
+which was almost madness!
+
+Afterwards the master had further orders. He must provide on one of the
+tables in the studio sweets, champagne, anything good he could find.
+Cotoner spoke of sending for the valet, complaining of the tasks which
+were imposed on him as a result of the visit of this girl of the
+guileless smile and the vile songs, who stood with arms akimbo.
+
+"No, Pepe," the master implored. "Listen--I don't want the valet to
+know. He talks afterward; my daughter probes him with questions."
+
+Cotoner went away with a resigned expression and when he returned an
+hour later, he found Renovales in the model's room arranging some
+clothes.
+
+The old painter lined up his packages on the table. He put the
+confectionery in antique plates and took the bottles out of their
+wrappers.
+
+"You are served, sir," he said with ironical respect. "Do you wish
+anything else, sir? The whole family is in a state of revolution over
+this noble lady; your son-in-law is bringing her; I am acting as your
+valet; all you need now is to send for your daughter to help her
+undress."
+
+"Thanks, Pepe, thanks ever so much," said the master with naive
+gratitude, apparently undisturbed by his jests.
+
+At luncheon time Cotoner saw him come into the dining-room with his hair
+carefully combed, his mustache curled, wearing his best suit with a rose
+in the buttonhole. The Bohemian laughed boisterously. The last straw! He
+was crazy; they would make sport of him!
+
+The master scarcely touched the meal. Afterwards he walked up and down
+alone in the studio. How slowly the time went! At each turn through the
+three studios he looked at the hands of an old clock of Saxon china,
+which stood on a table of colored marble, with its back reflected in a
+tall, Venetian mirror.
+
+It was already three. The master wondered if she was not going to come.
+Quarter past three,--half-past three. No, she was not coming; it was
+past the time. Those women who live amid obligations and demands,
+without a minute to themselves!
+
+Suddenly he heard steps and Cotoner entered.
+
+"She is here; here she comes. Good luck, master. Have a good time! I
+guess you have imposed on me long enough and will not expect me to
+stay."
+
+He went out waving him an ironical farewell and a little later
+Renovales heard Lopez de Sosa's voice, approaching slowly, explaining to
+his companion the pictures and furniture which attracted her attention.
+
+They entered. The "Bella Fregolina" looked astonished; she seemed
+intimidated by the majestic silence of the studio. What a big, princely
+house, so different from all those she had seen! That ancient, solid,
+historic luxury with its rare furniture filled her with fear! She looked
+at Renovales with great respect. He seemed to her more distinguished
+than that other man whom she had seen indistinctly in the orchestra of
+her little theater. He was awe-inspiring, as if he were a great
+personage, different from all the men with whom she had had to do. To
+her fear was added a sort of admiration. How much money that old boy
+must have, living in such style!
+
+Renovales, too, was deeply moved when he saw her so close at hand.
+
+At first he hesitated. Was she really like the other? The paint on her
+face disconcerted him--the layer of rouge with black lines about the
+eyes--visible through the veil. The _other_ did not paint. But when he
+looked at her eyes, the striking resemblance rose again, and starting
+from them he gradually restored the beloved face under the layers of
+pomade.
+
+The "star" examined the canvases which covered the walls. How pretty!
+And did this gentleman do all that? She wanted to see herself like that,
+proud and beautiful in a canvas. Did he truly want to paint her? And she
+drew herself up vainly, delighted that people thought she was beautiful,
+that she would enjoy the emotion until then unknown of seeing her image
+reproduced by a great artist.
+
+Lopez de Sosa excused himself to his father-in-law. She was to blame for
+their being late. You could never get a woman like that to hurry. She
+went to bed at daybreak; he had found her in bed.
+
+Then he said good-by, understanding the embarrassment his presence might
+cause. Pepita was a good girl, she was dazzled by his works and the
+appearance of the house. The master could do what he wanted with her.
+
+"Well, little girl, you stay here. The gentleman is my father; I told
+you already. Be sure and be a good girl."
+
+And he went out, followed by the forced laugh of them both, who greeted
+this recommendation with uneasy merriment.
+
+A long and painful silence followed. The master did not know what to
+say. Timidity and emotion weighed on his will. She seemed no less
+disturbed. That great room, so silent and imposing with its massive,
+superb decorations, different from anything she had seen, frightened
+her. She felt the vague terror which precedes an unknown operation.
+Besides, she was disturbed by the man's glowing eyes fixed on her, with
+a quiver on his cheeks and a twitching of his lips, as if they were
+tormented by thirst.
+
+She soon recovered from her timidity. She was used to these moments of
+shamefaced silence which came with the lone meeting of two strangers.
+She knew these interviews which begin hesitatingly and end in rough
+familiarity.
+
+She looked around with a professional smile, eager to end the unpleasant
+situation as soon as possible.
+
+"When you will. Where shall I undress?"
+
+Renovales started at the sound of her voice, as if he had forgotten that
+that image could speak. The simplicity with which she dispensed with
+explanations surprised him likewise.
+
+His son-in-law did things well; he had brought her well coached, callous
+to all surprises.
+
+The master showed her the way to the model's room and remained outside,
+prudently, turning his head without knowing why, so as not to see
+through the half-opened door. There was a long silence, broken by the
+rustle of falling clothes, the metallic click of buttons and hooks.
+Suddenly her voice came to the master, smothered, distant with a sort of
+timidity.
+
+"My stockings too? Must I take them off?"
+
+Renovales knew this objection of all models when they undressed for the
+first time. Lopez de Sosa, carrying his desire of pleasing his father to
+the extreme, had spoken to her of giving her body wholly and she
+undressed without asking any further explanations, with the calm of
+accepted duty, thinking that her presence there was absurd for any other
+purpose.
+
+The painter came out of his silence; he called to her uneasily. She must
+not stay undressed. In the room there were clothes for her to put on.
+And without turning his head, reaching his arm through the half open
+door he pointed out blindly what he had left. There was a pink dress, a
+hat, shoes, stockings, a shirt.
+
+Pepita protested when she saw these cast-off garments, showing an
+aversion to putting on those underclothes which seemed worn and old.
+
+"The shirt, too? The stockings? No, the dress is enough."
+
+But the master begged her impatiently. She must put them all on; his
+painting demanded it. The long silence of the girl proved that she was
+complying, putting on these old garments, overcoming her repugnance.
+
+When she came out of the room she smiled with a sort of pity, as if she
+were laughing at herself. Renovales drew back, stirred by his own work,
+bewildered, feeling his temples throbbing, fancying that the pictures
+and furniture were whirling about him.
+
+Poor "Fregolina"! What a delightful clown! She felt like laughing at the
+thought of the storm of cries which would burst out in her theater if
+she should appear on the stage dressed in this fashion, of the jests of
+her friends if she should come into one of their dinners in these
+clothes of twenty years ago. She did not know these styles, and to her
+they seemed to belong to a remote antiquity. The master leaned over the
+back of a chair.
+
+"Josephina! Josephina!"
+
+It was she, such as he kept her in his memory--as she was that happy
+summer in the Roman mountains, in her pink dress and that rustic hat
+which gave her the dainty air of a village girl in the opera. Those
+fashions at which the younger generation laughed were for him the most
+beautiful, the most artistic that feminine taste had ever produced; they
+recalled the spring of his life.
+
+"Josephina! Josephina!"
+
+He remained silent, for these exclamations were born and died in his
+thoughts. He did not dare to move or speak, for fear this apparition of
+his dreams would vanish. She, smiling, was delighted at the effect her
+appearance had on the painter and seeing her reflection in a distant
+mirror, recognized that in this strange costume she did not look at all
+badly.
+
+"Where shall I go? Sitting or standing?"
+
+The master could hardly speak; his voice was hoarse, labored.
+
+She could pose as she wished. And she sat down in a chair adopting a
+posture which she considered very graceful--her cheek on one hand, her
+legs crossed, just as she was wont to sit in the green room of the
+theater, showing a bit of open-work pink silk stocking under her skirt.
+That too reminded the painter of the other.
+
+It was she! She sat before his eyes in bodily form, with the perfume of
+the form he loved.
+
+From instinct, from habit, he took up his palette and a brush stained
+with black, trying to trace the outlines of that figure. Ah, his hand
+was old, heavy, trembling! Where had his old time skill fled, his
+drawing, his striking qualities? Had he really ever painted? Was he
+truly the painter Renovales? He had suddenly forgotten everything. His
+head seemed empty, his hand paralyzed, the white canvas filled him with
+a terror of the unknown. He did not know how to paint; he could not
+paint. His efforts were useless; his mind was deadened. Perhaps,--some
+other day. Now his ears hummed, his face was pale, his ears were red,
+purple, as if they were on the point of dripping blood. In his mouth he
+felt the torment of a deathly thirst.
+
+The "Bella Fregolina" saw him throw down his palette and come toward her
+with a wild expression.
+
+But she felt no fear; she knew those distorted faces. This sudden rush
+was no doubt part of the program; she was warned when she went there
+after her friendly conversation with the son-in-law. That gentleman, so
+serious and so imposing, was like all the men she knew, as brutal as the
+rest.
+
+She saw him come to her with open arms, take her in a close embrace,
+fall at her feet with a hoarse cry, as if he were stifling; and she,
+gently and sympathetically encouraged him, bending her head, offering
+her lips with an automatic loving expression which was the implement of
+her profession.
+
+The kiss was enough to overcome the master completely.
+
+"Josephina! Josephina!"
+
+The perfume of the happy days rose from her clothes, surrounding her
+adorable person. It was her form, her flesh! He was going to die at her
+feet, suffocated by the immense desire that swelled within him. It was
+she; her very eyes--her eyes! And as he raised his glance to lose
+himself in their soft pupils, to gaze at himself in their trembling
+mirror, he saw two cold eyes, which examined him, half closed with
+professional curiosity, taking a scornful delight from their calm height
+in this intoxication of the flesh, this madness which groveled, moaning
+with desire.
+
+Renovales was thunderstruck with surprise; he felt something icy run
+down his back, paralyzing him; his eyes were veiled with a cloud of
+disappointment and sorrow.
+
+Was it really Josephina whom he had in his arms? It was her body, her
+perfume, her clothes, her beauty, pale as a dying flower. But no, it was
+not she! Those eyes! In vain did they look at him differently, alarmed
+at this sudden reaction; in vain they softened with a tender light,
+trained by habit. The deceit was useless; he saw beyond, he penetrated
+through those bright windows into the depths; he found only emptiness.
+The other's soul was not there. That maddening perfume no longer moved
+him; it was a false essence. He had before him merely a reproduction of
+the beloved vase, but the incense, the soul, lost forever.
+
+Renovales, standing up, drew away from her, looking at that woman with
+terror in his eyes, and finally threw himself on a couch, with his face
+in his hands.
+
+The girl, hearing him sob, was afraid and ran toward the models' room to
+take off those clothes, to flee. The man must be mad.
+
+The master was weeping. Farewell, youth! Farewell desire! Farewell
+dreams; enchanting sirens of life, that have fled forever. Useless the
+search, useless the struggle in the solitude of life. Death had him in
+his grasp, he was his and only through him could he renew his youth.
+These images were useless. He could not find another to call up the
+memory of the dead like this hired woman whom he had held in his
+arms--and still, it was not she!
+
+At the supreme moment, on the verge of reality, that indefinable
+something had vanished, that something which had been enclosed in the
+body of his Josephina, of his _maja_, whom he had worshiped in the
+nights of his youth.
+
+Immense, irreparable disappointment flooded his body with the icy calm
+of old age.
+
+Fall, ye towers of illusion! Sink, ye castles of fancy, built with the
+longing to make the way fair, to hide the horizon! The path still
+remained unbroken, barren and deserted. In vain would he sit by the
+roadside, putting off the hour of his departure, in vain would he bow
+his head that he might not see. The longer his rest, the longer his
+fearful torment. At every hour he was destined to gaze at the dreaded
+end of the last journey--unclouded, undisturbed--the dwelling from which
+there is no return--the black, greedy abyss--death!
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[A] The life of this character is the theme of _La Horda_, by
+the same author.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Woman Triumphant, by Vicente Blasco Ibanez
+
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