IV.
Pacorrito had reached the state of emotional excitement, the delirium peculiar to heroes of romance. His brain boiled; writhing, stinging serpents wound themselves around his heart; his mind was a volcano; he despised life; he longed for death; he soliloquized; he gazed at the moon; he soared beyond the seventh heaven. Many a time had night overtaken him in a melancholy ecstasy before the show-window, oblivious to everything, oblivious to his very business interests. It might be well to state at once that our good Migajas met with no rebuff. I mean that his mad passion was to a certain extent reciprocated. Who can measure the intensity of a heart of tow and sawdust? The world is full of mysteries. Science is vain and will never penetrate the depths of things. Who will draw the line defining the exact sphere of the inanimate? Where does the inanimate begin? Down with the pedant who stands before a stone or a cork and says, "Thou hast no soul." God alone knows the true dimensions of the invisible limbo, wherein rests all that which does not love.
Pacorrito was quite sure of having stirred his lady's pulse. She gazed at him, and without moving a muscle, opening her mouth, or winking an eye, she spoke soulful things to him, now sweet as hope, now sad like the prescience of tragic events. This naturally fanned the flame that burned in our friend's heart, and his daring imagination conceived dramatic plans of conquest, and even of matrimony.
One night the faithful lover repaired punctually to the tryst. The lady was seated at the piano, her hands suspended over the keys, and her divine face turned to the street. The ragamuffin and she exchanged glances; and what passion, what idealism, in that look! Sighs and tender thoughts were following one another, when an event occurred which clipped the thread of this sweet communion and shattered at one blow the happiness of both lovers. It was one of those sudden catastrophes that inflict a mortal wound and lead to suicides, tragedies, and other lamentable things.
A hand proceeding from the interior of the shop was thrust into the show-window; it caught the lady by the belt and disappeared with her within. Pacorrito's amazement was followed by a sense of misery so intense that he longed to die there and then. To see the object of his love vanish as though she had been swallowed by the insatiable grave, to be unable to rescue her or follow her, were it to the bottomless pit, ah, here was a blow which was beyond human endurance!
Migajas was about to drop on the sidewalk. He thought of suicide; he invoked God and the Devil.
"They have sold her!" he muttered hoarsely; and he pulled his hair and scratched his face and kicked, and as he did so he dropped his matches, his lottery tickets, and his newspapers. Worldly interests, you are not worth a sigh!