II

From Valencia to Játiva, in all that immense territory covered with

rice-fields and orange groves which Valencians embrace under the general

and rather vague designation of _La Ribera_, there was no one unfamiliar

with the name of Brull and the political power it stood for.

As if national unity had not yet been effected and the country were

still divided into _taifas_ and _waliatos_ as in the days when one

Moorish King reigned over Carlet, another over Denia, and a third over

Játiva, the election system maintained a sort of inviolable rulership in

every district; and when the Administration people came to Alcira in

forecasting their political prospects, they always said the same thing:

"We're all right there. We can rely on Brull."

The Brull dynasty had been bossing the district for thirty years, with

ever-increasing power.

The founder of this sovereign house had been Rafael's grandfather, the

shrewd don Jaime, who had established the family fortune by fifty years

of slow exploitation of ignorance and poverty. He began life as a clerk

in the _Ayuntamiento_ of Alcira; then he became secretary to the

municipal judge, then assistant to the city clerk, then

assistant-registrar of deeds. There was not a subordinate position in

those offices where the poor come in contact with the law that he did

not get his hands on; and from such points of vantage, by selling

justice as a favor and using power or adroitness to subdue the

refractory, he felt his way along, appropriating parcel after parcel of

that fertile soil which he adored with a miser's covetousness.

A brazen charlatan he was, every moment talking of "Article Number

So-and-So" of the law that applied to the case. The poor orchard workers

came to have as much awe for his learning as fear of his malice, and in

all their controversies they sought his advice and paid for it, as if he

were a lawyer.

When he had gotten a small fortune together, he continued holding his

menial posts in the city administration to retain the superstitious

respect which is inspired in peasant-folk by all who are on good terms

with the law; but not content with playing the eternal beggar, dependent

on the humble gratuities of the poor, he took to pulling them out of

their financial difficulties, lending them money on the collateral of

their future harvests.

But six per cent seemed too petty a profit for him. The real plight of

these folk came when a horse died and they had to buy another. Don Jaime

became a dealer in dray horses, buying more or less defective animals

from gypsies in Valencia, praising their virtues to the skies, and

reselling them as thoroughbreds. And no sale on the instalment plan!

Cash down! The horses did not belong to him--as he vowed with his hand

pressed solemnly to his bosom--and their owners wished to realize on

their value at once. The best he could do in the circumstances prompted

by his greatness of heart, which always overflowed at the sight of

poverty was to borrow money for the purchase from a friend of his.

The peasant in his desperate need would fall into the snare, and carry

off the horse after signing all kinds of notes and mortgages to cover

the loan of money he had not seen! For the don Jaime who spoke for the

unknown party in the deal transferred the cash to the same don Jaime who

spoke for the owner of the horse. Result: the rustic bought an animal,

without chaffering, at double its value, having in addition borrowed a

lot of money at cut-throat interest. In every turn-over of this sort don

Jaime doubled his principal. New straits inevitably developed for the

dupe; the interest kept piling up; hence new concessions, still more

ruinous than the first, that don Jaime might be placated and give the

purchaser a month's reprieve.

Every Wednesday, which was market-day in Alcira and brought a great

crowd of orchard-folk to town, the street where don Jaime lived was the

busiest in the city. People came in droves to ask for renewal of their

notes, each leaving a tip of several _pesetas_ usually, not to be

counted against the debt itself. Others, humbly, timidly, as if they had

come to rob the grasping Shylock, would ask for loans; and the strange

thing about it, as the malicious noted, was that all these people, after

leaving everything they owned in don Jaime's hands, went off content,

their faces beaming with satisfaction, as if they had just been rescued

from a danger.

This was don Jaime's chief skill. He had the trick of making usury look

like kindness; he always spoke of _those fellows_, those hidden owners

of the money and the horses--heartless wretches who were "after him,"

holding him responsible for the short-comings of all their debtors. The

burdens he thus supposedly assumed won him a reputation as a

kind-hearted soul, and such confidence was the wily old demon able to

instill in his victims that when mortgages were foreclosed on homes or

fields, many of the unfortunates despoiled, would say, resignedly:

"It's not his fault. What could the poor man do if they forced him to

it? It's those _other fellows_ who are sucking the blood of us poor

folks."

And so, quietly, leisurely, tranquilly, don Jaime got possession of a

field here, then another there, then a third between the two; and in a

few years he had rounded out a beautiful orchard of orange-trees with

virtually no expenditure of capital at all. Thus his property went on

increasing, and, with his radiant smile, his spectacles on his forehead

and his paunch growing fatter and fatter, he could be seen surrounded by

new victims, addressing them with the affectionate _tu_, patting them on

the back, and vowing that this weakness he had for the doing of favors

would some day bring him to dying like a dog in the gutter.

Thus he went on prospering. Nor was all the scoffing of city people of

any avail in shaking the confidence reposed in him by that flock of

rustics, who feared him as they feared the Law itself and believed in

him as they believed in God.

A loan to a spendthrift eldest son made him the proprietor of the fine

city mansion, which came to be known as "the Brull place." From that

date he began to hob-nob with the large real-estate owners of the city,

who, though they despised this upstart, made a small place for him in

their midst with the instinctive solidarity that characterizes the

freemasonry of money. To gain a little more standing for his name, he

became a votary of San Bernardo, contributed to the funds for church

festivals, and danced attendance on the _alcalde_, whoever that "mayor"

might be. In his eyes now, the only people in Alcira were such as

collected thousands of _duros_, whenever harvest time came around. The

rest were rabble, rabble, sir!

Then, at last he resigned the petty offices he had been filling; and

handing his usury business over to those who formerly had served him as

go-betweens, he set himself to the task of marrying off his son and sole

heir, Ramon, an idling ne'er-do-well, who was always getting into

trouble and upsetting the tranquil comfort that surrounded old Brull as

he rested from his plunderings.

The father felt the satisfaction of a bully in having such a tall,

strong, daring and insolent son, a boy who compelled respect in cafes

and clubs more with his fists than with the special privileges conferred

in small towns by wealth. Let anyone dare make fun of the old usurer

when he had such a fire-eater to protect him!

Ramon had wanted to join the Army; but every time he referred to what he

called his vocation, his father would fly into a rage. "Do you think

that is what I've worked for all these years?" He could remember the

time when, as a poor clerk, he had been forced to fawn on his superiors

and listen humbly, cringingly, to their reprimands. He did not want a

boy of his to be shoved about hither and thither like a mere machine.

"Plenty of brass buttons," he exclaimed with the scorn of a man never to

be taken in by external show, "and plenty of gold braid! But after all,

a slave, a slave!"

No, he wanted to see his son free and influential, continuing the

conquest of the city, completing the family greatness of which he had

laid the foundations, getting power over people much as he himself had

gotten power over money. Ramón must become a lawyer, the only career for

a man destined to rule others. It was a passionate ambition the old

pettifogger had, to see his scion enter through the front door and with

head proudly erect, the precincts of the law, into which he had crawled

so cautiously and at the risk, more than once, of being dragged out with

a chain fastened to his ankle.

Ramón spent several years in Valencia without getting beyond the

elementary courses in Common Law. The cursed classes were held in the

morning, you see, and he had to go to bed at dawn--the hour when the

lights in the pool-rooms went out. Besides, in his quarters at the hotel

he had a magnificent shotgun--a present from his father; and

homesickness for the orchards made him pass many an afternoon at the

pigeon traps where he was far better known than at the University.

This fine specimen of masculine youth--tall, muscular, tanned, with a

pair of domineering eyes to which thick eyebrows gave a touch of

harshness--had been born for action, and excitement; Ramón simply

couldn't concentrate on books!

Old Brull, who through niggardliness and prudence had placed his son on

"half rations," as he put it, sent the boy just money enough to keep him

going; but dupe, in turn, of the wiles he had formerly practiced on the

rustics of Alcira, he was compelled to make frequent trips to Valencia,

to come to some understanding with money lenders there, who had

advanced loans to his son on such terms that insolvency might lead Ramón

to a prison cell.

Home to Alcira came rumors of other exploits by the "Prince," as don

Jaime called his boy in view of the latter's ability to run through

money. In parties with friends of the family, don Ramón's doings were

spoken of as scandalous actually--a duel after a quarrel at cards; then

a father and a brother--common workingmen in flannel shirts!--who had

sworn they would kill him if he didn't marry a certain girl he had been

taking to her shop by day and to dance-halls by night.

Old Brull made up his mind to tolerate these escapades of his son no

longer; and he made him give up his studies. Ramón would not be a

lawyer; well, after all, one didn't have to have a degree to be a man of

importance. Besides the father felt he was getting old; it was hard for

him to look after the working of his orchards personally. He could make

good use of that son who seemed to have been born to impose his will

upon everybody around him.

For some time past don Jaime had had his eye on the daughter of a friend

of his. The Brull house showed noticeable lack of a woman's presence.

His wife had died shortly after his retirement from business, and the

old codger stamped in rage at the slovenliness and laziness displayed by

his servants. He would marry Ramón to Bernarda--an ugly, ill-humored,

yellowish, skinny creature--but sole heiress to her father's three

beautiful orchards. Besides, she was conspicuous for her industrious,

economical ways, and a parsimony in her expenditures that came pretty

close to stinginess.

Ramón did as his father bade him. Brought up with all the ideas of a

rural skinflint, he thought no decent person could object to marrying an

ugly bad-tempered woman, so long as she had plenty of money.

The father-in-law and the daughter-in-law understood each other

perfectly. The old man's eyes would water at sight of that stern,

long-faced puritan, who never had much to say in the house, but went

into high dudgeon over the slightest waste on the part of the domestics,

scolding the farmhands for the merest oversight in the orchards,

haggling and wrangling with the orange drummers for a _centime_ more or

less per hundredweight. That new daughter of his was to be the solace of

his old age!

Meantime, the "prince" would be off hunting every morning in the nearby

mountains and lounging every afternoon in the cafe; but he was no longer

content with the admiration of the idlers hanging around a billiard

table, nor was he taking part in the game upstairs. He was frequenting

the circles of "serious" people now, had made friends with the _alcalde_

and was talking all the time of the great need for getting all "decent"

folk together to take the "rabble" in hand!

"Ambition is pecking at him," the old man gleefully remarked to his

daughter-in-law. "Let him alone, woman; he'll get there, he'll get

there... That's the way I like to see him."

Ramón began by winning a seat in the _Ayuntamiento_, and soon was an

outstanding figure there. The least objection to his views he regarded

as a personal insult; he would transfer debates in session out into the

streets and settle them there with threats and fisticuffs. His greatest

glory was to have his enemies say of him:

"Look out for that Ramón ... He's a tough proposition."

Along with all this combativeness, he sought to win friends by a lavish

hand that was his father's torment. He "did favors," assured a living,

that is, to every loafer and bully in town. He was ready to be "touched"

by anyone who could serve, in tavern and café, as advertising agent of

his rising fame.

And he rose rapidly, in fact. The old folks who had pushed him forward

with influence and counsel soon found themselves left far behind. In a

short time he had become _alcalde;_ his prestige outgrew the limits of

the city, spread over the whole district, and eventually reached the

capital of the province itself. He got able-bodied men exempted from

military service; he winked at corruption in the city councils that

backed him, although the perpetrators deserved to go to prison; he saw

to it that the constabulary was not too energetic in running down the

_roders_, the "wanderers," who, for some well-placed shot at election

time, would be forced to flee to the mountains. No one in the whole

country dared make a move without the previous consent of don Ramón,

whom his adherents always respectfully called their _quefe_, their

"chief."

Old Brull lived long enough to see Ramón reach the zenith of his fame.

That scallawag was realizing the old man's dream: the conquest of the

city, ruling over men where his father had gotten only money! And, in

addition don Jaime lived to see the perpetuation of the Brull dynasty

assured by the birth of a grandson, Rafael, the child of a couple who

had never loved each other, but were united only by avarice and

ambition.

Old Brull died like a saint. He departed this life with the consolation

of all the last sacraments. Every cleric in the city helped to waft his

soul heavenward with clouds of incense at the solemn obsequies. And,

though the rabble--the political opponents of the son, that is--recalled

those Wednesdays long before when the flock from the orchards would come

to let itself be fleeced in the old Shylock's office, all safe and sane

people--people who had something in this world to lose--mourned the

death of so worthy and industrious a man, a man who had risen from the

lowest estate and had finally been able to accumulate a fortune by hard

work, honest hard work!

In Rafael's father there still remained much of the wild student who had

caused so many tongues to wag in his youthful days. But his doings with

peasant girls were hushed up now; fear of the _cacique's_ power stifled

all gossip; and since, moreover, affairs with such lowly women cost very

little money, doña Bernarda pretended to know nothing about them. She

did not love her husband much. She was leading that narrow,

self-centered life of the country woman, who feels that all her duties

are fulfilled if she remains faithful to her mate and keeps saving

money.

By a noteworthy anomaly, she, who was so stingy, so thrifty, ready to

start a squabble on the public square in defense of the family money

against day-laborers or middlemen, was tolerance itself toward the

lavish expenditures of her husband in maintaining his political

sovereignty over the region.

Every election opened a new breach in the family fortune. Don Ramón

would receive orders to carry his district for some non-resident, who

might not have lived there more than a day or two. So those who governed

yonder in Madrid had ordered--and orders must be obeyed. In every town

whole muttons would be set turning over the fires. Tavern wine would

flow like water. Debts would be cancelled and fistfulls of _pesetas_

would be distributed among the most recalcitrant, all at don Ramón's

expense of course. And his wife, who wore a calico wrapper to save on

clothes and stinted so much on food that there was hardly anything left

for the servants to eat, would be arrayed in splendor when the day for

the contest came around, ready in her excitement to help her husband

throw the entire house through the window, if need be.

This, however, was all pure speculation on her part. The money that was

being scattered so madly broadcast was a "loan" simply. Some day she

would get it back with interest. Already her piercing eyes were

caressing the tiny, dark-complexioned, restless little creature that lay

across her knees, seeing in him the privileged heir-apparent who would

one day reap the harvest from all such family sacrifices.

Doña Bernarda had taken refuge in religion as in a cool, refreshing

oasis in the desert of vulgarity and monotony in her life. Her heart

would swell with pride every time a priest would say to her in the

church:

"Take good care of don Ramón. Thanks to him the wave of demagogy halts

at the temple door and evil fails to triumph in the District. He is the

bulwark of the Lord against the impious!"

And when, after such a declaration, which flattered her worldly vanity

and assured her of a mansion in Heaven, she would pass through the

streets of Alcira in her calico wrapper and a shawl not over-clean,

greeted affectionately, effusively, by the leading citizens, she would

pardon don Ramón all the infidelities she knew about and consider the

sacrifice of her fortune a good investment.

"If it were not for what we do, what would happen to the District....

The lower scum would conquer--those wild-eyed mechanics and common

laborers who read the Valencian newspapers and talk about equality all

the time. And they would divide up the orchards, and demand that the

product of the harvests--thousands and thousands of _duros_ paid for

oranges by the Englishmen and the French--should belong to all." But to

stave off such a cataclysm, there stood don Ramón, the scourge of the

wicked, the champion of "the cause" which he led to triumph, gun in

hand, at election time; and just as he was able to send any rebellious

trouble-maker off to the penal settlement, so he found it easy to keep

at liberty all those who, despite the various murders that figured in

their biographies, lent themselves to the service of the government in

this support of "law and order!"

The patrimony of the House of Brull went down and down, but its prestige

rose higher and higher. The sacks of money filled by the old man at the

cost of so much roguery were shaken empty over all the District; nor

were several assaults upon the municipal treasury sufficient to bring

them back to normal roundness. Don Ramón contemplated this squandering

impassively, proud that people should be talking of his generosity as

much as of his power.

The whole District worshipped as a sacred flagstaff that bronzed,

muscular, massive figure, which floated a huge, flowing, gray-flecked

mustache from its upper end.

"Don Ramón, you ought to remove that bush," his clerical friends would

say to him with a smile of affectionate banter. "Why, man, you look just

like Victor Emmanuel himself, the Pope's jailer."

But though don Ramón was a fervent Catholic (who never went to mass),

and hated all the infidel turnkeys of the Holy Father, he would grin and

give a satisfied twirl at the offending mouth-piece, quite flattered at

bottom to be likened to a king.

The _patio_ of the Brull mansion was the throne of his sovereignty. His

partisans would find him there, pacing up and down among the green boxes

of plantain trees, his hands clasped behind his broad, strong, but now

somewhat stooping back--a majestic back withal, capable of supporting

hosts and hosts of friends.

There he "administered justice," decided the fate of families, settled

the affairs of towns--all in a few off-hand but short and decisive

words, like one of those ancient Moorish kings who, in that selfsame

territory, centuries before, legislated for their subjects under the

open sky. On market-days the _patio_ would be thronged. Carts would stop

in long lines on either side of the door. All the hitching-posts along

the streets would have horses tied to them, and inside, the house would

be buzzing like a bee-hive with the chatter of that rustic gentry.

Don Ramón would give them all a hearing, frowning gravely meanwhile, his

chin on his bosom and one hand on the head of the little Rafael at his

side--a pose copied from a chromo of the Kaiser petting the Crown

Prince.

On afternoons when the _Ayuntamiento_ was in session, the chief could

never leave his _patio_. Of course not a chair in the city hall could be

dusted without his permission; but he preferred to remain invisible,

like a god, knowing well that his power would seem more terrible if it

spoke only from the pillar of fire or from the whirlwind.

All day long city councilors would go trotting back and forth from the

City Hall to the Brull _patio._ The few enemies don Ramón had in the

Council--meddlers, doña Bernarda called them--idiots who swallowed

everything in print provided it were against the King and

religion--attacked the _cacique_ persistently, censuring everything he

did. Don Ramón's henchmen would tremble with impotent rage. "That charge

must be answered! Let's see now: somebody go and ask the boss!"

And a _regidor_ would be off to don Ramón's like a greyhound; and

arriving at the _patio_ panting, out of breath, he would heave a sigh of

relief and contentment at sight of "the chief" there, pacing up and down

as usual, ready to get his friends out of their difficulties as if the

limitless resources of Providence were at his command. "So-and-So said

this-and-that!" Don Ramón would stop in his tracks, think a moment, and

finally say, in an enigmatic oracular voice: "Very well, tell him to put

this in his pipe and smoke it!" Whereupon the henchman, mouth agape,

would rush back to the session like a racehorse. His companions would

gather about him eager to know the reply that don Ramón's wisdom had

deigned to suggest; and a quarrel would start then, each one anxious to

have the privilege of annihilating the enemy with the magic words--all

talking at the same time like magpies suddenly set chattering by the

dawn of a new light.

If the opposition held its ground, again stupefaction would come over

them. Another mad dash in quest of a new consultation. Thus the sessions

would go by, to the great delight of the barber Cupido--the sharpest and

meanest tongue in the city--who, whenever the Council met, would observe

to his early morning shaves:

"Holiday today: the usual race of councilors bare-back."

When party exigencies forced don Ramón to be out of town, it was his

wife, the energetic doña Bernarda, who attended to the consultations,

issuing statements on party policy, as wise and apt as those of "the

chief" himself.

This collaboration in the upbuilding and the up-holding of the family

influence was the single bond of union between husband and wife. This

cold woman, a complete stranger to tenderness, would flush with pleasure

every time the chief approved her ideas. If only she were "boss" of "the

Party!" ...Don Andrés had often said as much himself!

This don Andrés was her husband's most intimate friend, one of those men

who are born to be second everywhere and in everything. Loyal to the

family to the point of sacrifice, he served, with the couple itself, to

fill out the Holy Trinity of the Brull religion that was the faith of

all the District. Where don Ramón could not go in person, don Andrés

would be present for him, as the chief's _alter ego_. In the towns he

was respected as the supreme vicar of that god whose throne was in the

_patio_ of the plantain trees; and people too shy to lay their

supplications before the god himself, would seek out that jolly

advocate,--a very approachable bachelor, who always had a smile on his

tanned, wrinkled face, and a story under his stiff cigar-stained

mustache.

Don Andrés had no relatives, and spent almost all his time at the

Brull's. He was like a piece of furniture that seems always to be

getting in the way at first; but when all were once accustomed to him,

he became an indispensable fixture in the family. In the days when don

Ramón had been a young subordinate of the _Ayuntamiento_, he had met and

liked the man, and taking him into the ranks of his "heelers," had

promoted him rapidly to be chief of staff. In the opinion of the "boss,"

there wasn't a cleverer, shrewder fellow in the world than don Andrés,

nor one with a better memory for names and faces. Brull was the

strategist who directed the campaign; don Andrés the tactician who

commanded actual operations and cleaned up behind the lines when the

enemy was divided and undone. Don Ramón was given to settling everything

in a violent manner, and drew his gun at the slightest provocation. If

his methods had been followed, "the Party" would have murdered someone

every day. Don Andrés had a smooth tongue and a seraphic smile that

simply wound _alcaldes_ or rebellious electors around his little

finger, and his specialty was the art of letting loose a rain of sealed

documents over the District that started complicated and never-ending

prosecutions against troublesome opponents.

He attended to "the chief's" correspondence, and was tutor and playmate

to the little Rafael, taking the boy on long walks through the orchard

country. To doña Bernarda he was confidential adviser.

That surly, severe woman showed her bare heart to no one in the world

save don Andrés. Whenever he called her his "señora," or his "worthy

mistress," she could not restrain a gesture of satisfaction; and it was

to him that she poured out her complaints against her husband's

misdeeds. Her affection for him was that of a dame of ancient chivalry

for her private squire. Enthusiasm for the glory of the house united

them in such intimacy that the opposition wagged its tongues, asserting

that doña Bernarda was getting even for her husband's waywardness. But

don Andrés, who smiled scornfully when accused of taking advantage of

the chief's influence to drive hard bargains to his own advantage, was

not the man to be trifled with if gossip ventured to smirch his

friendship with the _señora_.

Their Trinity was most closely cemented, however, by their fondness for

Rafael, the little tot destined to bring fame to the name of Brull and

realize the ambitions of both his grandfather and his father.

Rafael was a quiet, morose little boy, whose gentleness of disposition

seemed to irritate the hard-hearted doña Bernarda. He was always hanging

on to her skirts. Every time she raised her eyes she would find the

little fellow's gaze fixed upon her.

"Go out and play in _the patio_," the mother would say.

And the little fellow, moody and resigned, would leave the room, as if

in obedience to a disagreeable command.

Don Andrés alone was successful in amusing the child, with his tales and

his strolls through the orchards, picking flowers for him, making

whistles for him out of reeds. It was don Andrés who took him to school,

also, and who advertised the boy's fondness for study everywhere.

If don Rafael were a serious, melancholy lad, that defect was chargeable

to his interest in books, and at the Casino, the "Party's" Club, he

would say to his fellow-worshippers:

"You'll see something doing when Rafaelito grows up. That kid is going

to be another Canovas."

And before all those rustic minds the vision of a Brull at the head of

the Government would suddenly flash, filling the first page of the

newspapers with speeches six columns long, and a _To Be Continued_ at

the end; and they could see themselves rolling in money and running all

Spain, just as they now ran their District, to their own sweet wills.

Never did a Prince of Wales grow up amid the respect and the adulation

heaped upon little Brull. At school, the children regarded him as a

superior being who had condescended to come down among them for his

education. A well-scribbled sheet, a lesson fluently repeated, were

enough for the teacher, who belonged to "the Party" (just to collect his

wages on time and without trouble,) to declare in prophetic tones:

"Go on working like that, señor de Brull. You are destined to great

things."

At the _tertulias_ his mother attended evenings in his company, it was

enough for him to recite a fable or get off some piece of learning

characteristic of a studious child eager to bring his school work into

the conversation, for the women to rush upon him and smother him with

kisses.

"But how much that child knows!... How brilliant he is!"

And some old woman would add, sententiously:

"Bernarda, take good care of the child; don't let him use his brain so

much. It's bad for him. See how peaked he looks!..."

He finished his preparatory education with the Dominicans, taking the

leading rôle in all the plays given in the tiny theatre of the friars,

and always with a place in the first line on prize days. The Party organ

dedicated an annual article to the scholastic prodigies of the "gifted

son of our distinguished chief don Ramón Brull, the country's hope, who

already merits title as the shining light of the future!"

When Rafael, escorted by his mother and half a dozen women who had

witnessed the exercises, would come home, gleaming with medals and his

arms full of diplomas, he would stoop and kiss his father's hard,

bristly hand; and that claw would caress the boy's head and

absent-mindedly sink into the old man's vest pocket--for don Ramón

expected to pay for all welcome favors.

"Very good," the hoarse voice would murmur. "That's the way I like to

see you do ...Here's a _duro_."

And not till the following year would the boy again know what a caress

from his father meant. On certain occasions, playing in the _patio_, he

had surprised the austere old man gazing at him fixedly, as if trying to

foresee his future.

Don Andrés took charge of settling Rafael in Valencia when he began his

university studies. The dream of old don Jaime, disillusioned in the

son, would be fulfilled in the third generation!

"This one at least will be a lawyer!" said doña Bernarda, who in the old

days had imbibed don Jaime's eagerness for the university degree, which

to her seemed like a title of nobility for the family.

And lest the corruption of the city should lead the son astray as it had

done Ramón in his student days, she would send don Andrés frequently to

the capital, and write letter after letter to her Valencian friends,

particularly to a canon of her intimate acquaintance, asking them not to

lose sight of the boy.

But Rafael was good behavior itself; a model boy, a "serious" young man,

the good canon assured the mother. The distinctions and the prizes that

came to him in Alcira continued to pursue him in Valencia; and besides,

don Ramón and his wife learned from the papers of the triumphs achieved

by their son in the debating society, a nightly gathering of law

students in a university hall, where future Solons wrangled on such

themes as "Resolved: that the French Revolution was more of a good than

an evil," or "Resolved, that Socialism is superior to Christianity."

Some terrible youths, who had to get home before ten o'clock to escape a

whipping, declared themselves rabid socialists and frightened the

beadles with curses on the institution of property--all rights reserved,

of course, to apply, as soon as they got out of college, for some

position under the government as registrar of deeds or secretary of

prefecture! But Rafael, ever sane and a congenital "moderate," was not

of those fire-brands; he sat on "the Right" of the august assembly of

Wranglers, maintaining a "sound" attitude on all questions, thinking

what he thought "with" Saint Thomas and "with" other orthodox sages whom

his clerical Mentor pointed out to him.

These triumphs were announced by telegraph in the Party papers, which,

to garnish the chief's glory and avoid suspicion of "inspiration,"

always began the article with: "According to a despatch printed in the

Metropolitan press ..."

"What a boy!" the priests of Alcira would say to doña Bernarda. "What a

silver tongue! You'll see; he'll be a second Manterola!"

And whenever Rafael came home for the holidays or on vacation, each time

taller than before, dressed like a fashion-plate and with mannerisms

that she took for the height of distinction, the saintly mother would

say to herself with the satisfaction of a woman who knows what it means

to be homely:

"What a handsome chap he's getting to be. All the rich girls in town

will be after him. He'll have his pick of them."

Doña Bernarda felt proud of her Rafael, a tall youth, with delicate yet

powerful hands, large eyes, an aquiline nose, a curly beard and a

certain leisurely, undulating grace of movement that suggested one of

those young Arabs of the white cloak and elegant babooshes, who

constitute the native aristocracy of Spain's African colonies.

Every time the student came home, his father gave him the same silent

caress. In course of time the _duro_ had been replaced by a hundred

_peseta_ note; but the rough claw that grazed his head was falling now

with an energy ever weaker and seemed to grow lighter with the years.

Rafael, from long periods of absence, noted his father's condition

better than the rest. The old man was ill, very ill. As tall as ever, as

austere and imposing, and as little given to words. But he was growing

thinner. His fierce eyes were sinking deeper into their sockets. There

was little left to him now except his massive frame. His neck, once as

sturdy as a bull's, showed the tendons and the arteries under the loose,

wrinkled skin; and his mustache, once so arrogant, but now withering

with each successive day, drooped dispiritedly like the banner of a

defeated army wet with rain.

The boy was surprised at the gestures and tears of anger with which his

mother welcomed expression of his fears.

"Well, I hope he'll die as soon as possible ... Lot's of use he is to

us!... May the Lord be merciful and take him off right now."

Rafael said nothing, not caring to pry into the conjugal drama that was

secretly and silently playing its last act before his eyes.

Don Ramón, that somber libertine of insatiable appetites, prey to a

sinister, mysterious inebriation, was tossing in a last whirlwind of

tempestuous desire, as though the blaze of sunset had set fire to what

remained of his vitality.

With a deliberate, determined lustfulness, he went scouring the

District like a wild satyr, and his brutish assaults, his terrorism and

abuse of authority, were reported back by scurrilous tongues to the

seignorial mansion, where his friend don Andrés was trying in vain to

pacify the wife.

"That man!" doña Bernarda would stammer in her rage. "That man is going

to ruin us! Doesn't he see he's compromising his son's future?"

His most enthusiastic adherents, without losing their traditional

respect for him, would speak smilingly of his "weaknesses"; but at

night, when don Ramón, exhausted by his struggle with the insatiable

demon gnawing at his spirit, would be snoring painfully away, with a

disgusting rattle that made it impossible for people in the house to

sleep, doña Bernarda would sit up in her bed with her thin arms folded

across her bosom, and pray to herself:

"My Lord, My God! May this man die as soon as possible! May all this

come to an end soon, oh Lord!"

And Bernarda's God must have heard her prayer, for her husband got

rapidly worse.

"Take care of yourself, don Ramón," his curate friends would say to him.

They were the only ones who dared allude to his disorderly life. "You're

getting old, and boyish pranks at your age are invitations to Death!"

The _cacique_ would smile, proud, at bottom, that all men should know

that such exploits were possible for a man at his age.

He had enough strength left for one more caress the day when, escorted

by don Andrés, Rafael entered with his degree as a Doctor of Law. He

gave the boy his shotgun--a veritable jewel, the admiration of the

entire District--and a magnificent horse. And as if he had been waiting

around just to see the realization of old Don Jaime's ambition, which he

himself had not been able to fulfill, he passed away.

All the bells of the city tolled mournfully.

The Party weekly came out with a black border a palm wide; and from all

over the District folks came in droves to see whether the powerful don

Ramón Brull, who had been able to rain upon the just and unjust alike on

this earth, could possibly have died the same as any other human being.