Morriña (Homesickness)

M O R R I Ñ A ( HOMESICKNESS )
BY EMILIA PARDO BAZÁN, TRANSLATED BY MARY J. SERRANO
CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY NEW YORK Copyright, 1891, by CASSELL PUBLISHING COMPANY. All rights reserved. THE MERSHON COMPANY PRESS, RAHWAY, N. J.

If the apartment which Doña Nogueira de Pardiñas and her only son Rogelio occupied in Madrid was neither the sunniest nor the most spacious to be found in the city, it possessed, on the other hand, the inestimable advantage of being situated in the Calle Ancha de San Bernardo, so close to the Central University that to live in it was, as one might say, the same as living in the university itself.
Seated in her leather-covered easy-chair by the window, widening and narrowing the stocking she was
“Seated in her leather-covered easy-chair by the window.”
knitting without once looking at it, Señora de Pardiñas would follow her adored boy with her gaze, which, traversing space and passing through the solid substance of the walls, accompanied him to the very lecture-room of the university. She saw him when he went in and when he came out—she noticed whether he stopped to chat with any one, whom he talked to, whether he laughed; she knew who his companions were, whom he liked and whom he disliked; who were the industrious students and whom the idle ones; who were regular and who were irregular in their attendance. She was familiar, too, with the faces of the professors, and made a study of their expression and their manner of returning the salutations of the pupils, drawing from external signs important psychological deductions bearing on the problem of the examinations: “Ah, there comes old Contreras already, the Professor of Procedure. How amiable he looks! what a saint-like face he has. How slowly he walks, poor man. ’Tis easy to see that he suffers from rheumatism as I do. The more’s the pity! I like him on that account, and not on that account alone, but because I know that he is indulgent and that he will give Rogelio a good mark in his examination. Now comes Ruiz del Monte, so stiff and so conceited. He looks as if he were made all in one piece. Poor us! Neither favor nor influence nor anything else is of any use with him. He would have the boys know the studies as well as he does himself. If he wants that let him give them his place in the college—and the pay as well. Ah, here we have Señor de Lastra. He stoops a little. What comical caricatures the boys make of him in the class! And he is familiar to a fault. There he is now clapping Benito Diaz, Rogelio’s great friend, on the back. He looks to me like a good easy-going man. My blessing upon him! I don’t know what there is to be gained by torturing poor boys and distressing their parents.”