Occasionally on pa.s.sing a young lady he would say, "Pretty as ever, Julia!" or else, "Your eyes are killing"; or, "Torquata, there's no one to come up to you in Sarrio," or any other remark flattering to a girl.

But while saying these things he maintained his gravity of demeanor, as he was aware that it was one of his most irresistible charms.

He waited for Valentina for some time, but the room was full of ladies, and the bra.s.s orchestra had played two dances without the pretty seamstress making her appearance. The strains of a mazurka began, the gilded youth encircled the slender waists of the working-girls, but Pablito, faithful to the absent, stood idle, looking on at the swift couples as they pa.s.sed before him.

The mazurka over, he began to think that Valentina would not come. In the sudden way he seized an idea he was very like his father, particularly when flushed with wine, so that in a few minutes he was quite convinced of the fact. This sudden fancy happened to be coincident with the entrance into the room of the fair Nieves. Their eyes met, and the poor girl, shamefully neglected for nearly two months, smiled sweetly at him. This sweetness had been precisely the cause of her failure, for the self-sufficient Pablito soon wearied of sweet women.

Nevertheless, he returned the smile, and on coming to her side he said, teasingly:

"Are you going to frighten the bulls, Nieves?"

The embroideress wore a scarlet sash at her waist, and this remark of her ex-admirer so fl.u.s.tered her that she could not reply. She smiled again, and said, "Ah!" "Yes," "No," and uttered a few more words that we do not remember, and looked as if she would faint with emotion. The next time he came across her he asked if she would like to dance the first polka with him. "The first, the second, the third, and all the polkas in the world," returned Nieves, with trembling lips. Pablo was filled with remorse after having engaged himself for the polka. "What a fool, what a brute I am! And suppose Valentina comes in now!"

But she did not come. The orchestra struck up the opening bars, and the youth, without turning his eyes from the door, encircled the waist of the embroideress and dashed rapidly into the centre of the room. Other young people, no less rapid, dashed from the opposite side, and then ensued one shock, then another, and then another. Such collisions formed the chief attraction of these b.a.l.l.s, and the young girls, instead of being angry at nearly losing their footing and having their hair tumbled, laughed with infinite pleasure. Pablo and Nieves, who could not take four turns without colliding with another couple, were perfectly charmed. Nevertheless, the young man felt his legs tremble whenever he pa.s.sed the door, and he always left it as quickly as possible. When the orchestra had finished he took his partner to a corner of the room and then sat down a minute, and Pablito felt a spark of feeling glow in the ashes of his love for that girl so cheerful, so good-tempered, and so affectionate.

"Yes, I wanted to dance with you, Nieves," he said as he wiped his brow with his handkerchief.

"And I with you, Pablo."

"You?"

The girl blushed.

"Do you say you instead of thou now?"

"It is now so long ago."

"You are right. But see, I have not forgotten."

"On Wednesday I saw you--I saw you in the Nieva road--you were on a white horse."

"It was a mare."

"I thought it would throw you."

"Throw me!" exclaimed Pablito, slightly frowning. "It was a bit fresh, child; a mare does not throw me so easily."

"But it reared up so! It almost stood upright. Goodness, how frightened I was!"

"I was teaching it to step high," returned the youth, with a smile of superiority. "As she has not been worked before she resisted a bit.

Sometimes her mouth seems too tender, but, taking her all round, Linda is a fine creature. Look here, when I bought her, or, rather, when I changed Negress--and she cost me over and above 1,500 reales--for her last October, she had a temper, indeed; she stuck in the middle of the road, she shied at the carts and carriages--in short, she was an impossible creature, and I said to myself: 'What is to be done with this mare?'"

Pablito, in whose heart the girl had touched a sensitive chord, talked long and brilliantly on his equestrian deeds. Nieves listened with rapturous delight, thinking that behind the minute description of Linda's peccadillos she was going to find her lost love.

But suddenly the orator (pof!) received a blow in the middle of his face, the listener (pof!) received another, and before they had recovered from their surprise they received two more--pof! pof!

The choleric Valentina was the author of this attack, and in less than a minute she had overwhelmed them with blows.

Pablito had nothing for it but to make his escape as gracefully as he could and retire to the street. Nieves remained like an innocent dove in the clutches of a vulture, until Valentina, seeing she could go no further, as her arms were seized by some of the party, quickly tore herself free, left the room, where the next dance was about to begin, and rushed into the street.

Pablito was walking slowly, still feeling quite stunned, when he felt a terrible pain in his arm. Being quite accustomed to that kind of torture, he said, without turning his head:

"Valentina!"

"It is I! Do you think you are going to make me a laughing-stock?"

"What you have just done is very ugly," replied the youth in an angry tone, and looking his beloved in the face. "You have made a scandal, and you have made me ridiculous. I will not tolerate that, do you hear?"

"You won't tolerate it? Well, look here, if I see you again with her I will not be contented with what I did to-day--I will strike at you both with a knife."

"But I won't allow you to do anything of the sort; neither will I have you speak to me when I am with another girl!" cried the young man, more and more infuriated.

"Not when I see you with that cat! We'll see about that, we'll see!"

Then the handsome youth, justly enraged and oblivious in his fury of all the laws of gallantry, discharged a blow at the face of his dear one, and then another, and then another, until, in fact, she had a regular buffeting. The pretty seamstress patiently submitted to this treatment of her admirer without evincing the slightest sign of resistance, nor even of avoidance of the blows. When Pablito had finished, she said, with delightful naturalness:

"Have you done now?"

"For the present, but I shall have to do it again!" roared the young man, blind with rage.

"Well, you can do it whenever you like, and I will bear it all without moving; but, beat me or not, I have told you what I shall do if I find you talking with her again. Now take me back to the ball."

"I don't want to."

"Very well; then take me somewhere else where I can put my hair straight, for you have quite disheveled it."

The youth had to obey, and so he escorted her to the Star Cafe, thinking on the way that he had to pay rather dearly for his conquests.

A few days later he had still greater reason to come to that conclusion.

It was at the Madrilena barber's where he frequently went to be shaved and have his hair cut.

Accompanied by his chief equerry, he had entered the place and taken a seat on the sofa to await his turn.

"At your pleasure, sir," said a pale young man with a slight black mustache, looking across at him as he turned a seat round.

Pablito went forward in an absent sort of way, and dropped into the armchair with the languid grace adopted by those endowed by Providence with great superiority.

The lad covered his face with soap, and the Belinchon youth, with his proud head thrown back, waited with majestic calm for the dark hue covering his cheeks to be removed. He kept his eyes closed so as better to enjoy the vague poetic thoughts pa.s.sing through his mind, for his head was always full of ideas on leaving the stable. His legs were stretched out comfortably under the table, and his gloved hands hung lazily from the arms of the chair.

"Fernando," said the barber, who was about to shave him, to one of his companions.

"What do you want, Cosme?"

This name made Pablito tremble without knowing why; he opened his eyes, and gave a long look at the hairdresser. He did not know him, he was a new hand in the establishment; but this, instead of calming him, made him change his position several times, with a loss of his habitual ease and languor.

"Can you give me the razor that was sharpened to-day?"

"Here it is."

Fernando stretched out his hand and gave the razor to Cosme. A vague desire to rise from his seat now came into Pablito's mind, but before he could do so the barber had taken him by the nose and was proceeding to shave him.