Episode 3

Will you give it to me?”

Everyone burst into loud laughter: the chaplain did not understand.

“What is he asking for?” he inquired.

“What should he ask for?” replied the Marquis merrily. “The wine, man! The glass of tostado!”

“Drink, boy!” exclaimed the abbot.

Before Julián could bring himself to give the child his almost full glass, the Marquis had lifted the little fellow, who would indeed have been a beauty were he not so dirty. He resembled Sabel, and even surpassed her in the clarity and joy of his sky-blue eyes, in the abundance of his curly hair, and especially in the correct design of his features. His little hands, brown and dimpled, stretched out toward the topaz-colored wine; the Marquis brought it near his mouth, amusing himself for a while by taking it away just when the boy thought himself master of it. At last the child succeeded in catching the glass, and in the twinkling of an eye drained the contents, smacking his lips.

“This one stands on no ceremony!” exclaimed the abbot.

“Not he!” confirmed the Marquis. “He is a veteran! I’ll wager you can tuck away another glass, Perucho!”

The little angel’s pupils sparkled; his cheeks glowed with fire, and his classical little nostrils dilated with the innocent concupiscence of an infant Bacchus. The abbot, winking his left eye roguishly, poured him another glass, which he took with both hands and poured down his throat without spilling a drop; immediately he burst out laughing, and before the burst of his Bacchic laughter was ended, his head fell, very pale, upon the Marquis’s breast.

“Do you see that?” cried Julián in the greatest anguish. “He is too small to drink like that, and he will make himself ill. These things are not for children.”

“Bah!” intervened Primitivo. “Do you think the boy cannot carry what he has inside? That and as much again! And if not, you shall see.”

In his turn he took the child in his arms and, dipping his fingers in cold water, passed them across his temples. Perucho opened his eyelids and looked around in wonder, and color returned to his face.

“How now?” Primitivo asked him. “Have you stomach for another drop of tostado?”

Perucho turned toward the bottle and then, as if instinctively, shook his head, swaying the dense fleece of his curls. Primitivo was not a man to admit defeat so easily: he plunged his hand into his trousers pocket and drew out a copper coin.

“In that fashion...” grumbled the abbot.

“Do not be a savage, Primitivo,” murmured the Marquis, between amusement and gravity.

“For God’s sake and the Virgin’s!” implored Julián. “You are going to kill that child! Man, do not persist in making the boy drunk: it is a sin, a sin as great as any other. Certain things cannot be looked upon!”

As he protested, Julián had risen to his feet, glowing with indignation, casting aside his native meekness and timidity. Primitivo, also on his feet, but without releasing Perucho, looked at the chaplain coldly and slyly, with the disdain that the stubborn feel for those who flare up for an instant. And pressing the copper coin into the child’s hand and placing between his lips the uncorked bottle, still a third full of wine, he tilted it and held it thus until all the liquor had passed into Perucho’s stomach. When the bottle was withdrawn, the child’s eyes closed, his arms fell limp, and not merely pale, but with the paleness of death upon his face, he would have dropped like a stone upon the table had not Primitivo caught him. The Marquis, turning somewhat serious, began to bathe the child’s forehead and wrists with cold water; Sabel drew near and helped with the sprinkling; all was in vain: for this night at least, Perucho had had his fill.

“Drunk as a lord,” growled the abbot.

“Tight as a drum,” murmured the Marquis. “To bed with him at once. Let him sleep and tomorrow he will be as fresh as a daisy. It is nothing.”

Sabel walked away laden with the child, whose legs swung lifelessly at every step his mother took. The supper came to an end less boisterously than it had begun: Primitivo spoke little, and Julián had lapsed into complete silence. When the banquet ended and thoughts turned to sleep, Sabel reappeared armed with a three-beaked brass oil lamp, with which she lighted the way up the broad stone staircase that led to the upper floor and ascended to the tower in a steep spiral. Large was the room destined for Julián, and the lamp’s flame scarcely dispelled the shadows, from which nothing stood out save the whiteness of the bed. At the door of the chamber the Marquis took his leave, wishing him good night and adding with rough cordiality:

“Tomorrow you shall have your luggage.... They will go to Cebre for it.... Come, rest now, while I turn the Abbot of Ulloa out of the house.... He is a bit... eh? I doubt whether he won’t fall by the wayside and spend the night under the shelter of a stone wall!”

Left alone at last, Julián drew from between his shirt and waistcoat an engraved print framed in sequins, representing Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and set it upright upon the table where Sabel had just deposited the lamp. He knelt down and recited half the Rosary, counting each decade upon his fingers. But the soreness of his body made him long for the coarse, cool sheets, and he omitted the litany, the acts of faith, and an Our Father or two. He undressed modestly, placing his clothes upon a chair as he took them off, and extinguished the lamp before lying down. Then all the events of the day began to dance in his imagination: the sorry nag that had almost made him bite the dust, the black cross that had given him the shivers, but above all the supper, the uproar, the drunken child. Judging the people with whom he had made acquaintance in a few short hours, Sabel seemed to him provocative, Primitivo insolent, the Abbot of Ulloa over-fond of drink and excessively attached to hunting, the dogs too lavishly cared for, and as for the Marquis.... As for the Marquis, Julián recalled certain words spoken by the Señor de la Lage:

“You will find my nephew rather run to seed.... The village, when one is bred in it and never leaves it, degrades, impoverishes, and brutalizes.”

And almost at the very instant that so severe a judgment recurred to his memory, the chaplain repented, feeling a certain painful disquietude which he could not overcome. Who bade him form rash judgments? He had come thither to say Mass and assist the Marquis in the administration of his estate, not to pass sentence upon his conduct and his character.... So then... to sleep...