"You must not neglect to write to the general immediately," said Mendoza, gravely.
"You are a man of ice, Perico! For you there are no friendships nor hatreds; no men are congenial or antipathetic. From all you take what you need, and go your way.... Perhaps you are right."
XVIII.
"You aren't vexed with me, Maximina, are you? The idea of leaving you alone all day!" he said, as he came to his wife's bed.
"Pshaw! If you did so, it must have been for some good reason," replied she, kissing the hand which was smoothing her cheek.
On the next day they received a call from Aunt Martina and her daughter Serafina. The worthy lady had grown visibly more feeble. 'Such a life she led with her husband! Don Bernardo kept growing more and more crazy with his foolish jealousies!' As she told what went on at home, she wept aloud.
"After forty years of married life, how could I possibly be unfaithful to your uncle, Miguel? Don't you think that I have proved that I am virtuous? And if I had to fall, moreover, it would not be with a carcamal[41] who smells of drugs for a mile! Isn't that so? You understand!..."
Miguel nodded assent, with difficulty repressing a smile, for it was as good as a play to find his aunt imagining that any young man would flirt with her.
"I am an honest woman.... Serafina, don't come in here; take the baby into the dining-room," she said, interrupting herself on seeing her daughter come into the bedroom with the sweet little thing in her arms.
"I have been all my life long. Never even in thought have I been untrue to my husband. In return for this, he puts me to shame before the servants, treating me little less than if I were a public woman. I cannot longer endure this martyrdom, Miguel. I am dying, dying daily. The other day he made a perfect scandal because he found the end of a cigar in my room. As neither Vicente nor Carlos smoke, he took it for granted that Hojeda had been there; he even went so far as to insist that it was a cigar such as the apothecary smokes, although he always smokes cigarettes! It made me faint away; they had to call the doctor. Finally, in the night, a little fifteen-year-old servant boy whom we have, seeing the serious trouble there was in the house, confessed to the maid that it was he who had left the cigar-end there, and he went to tell your Uncle Bernardo. Then, though he instantly dismissed him, he did not remain calm. The servants don't stay with us more than a fortnight; he imagines that they are all the apothecary's pimps.... Day before yesterday the newsboy came along and handed me the paper as I happened to be walking along the corridor. My husband sees it, takes it into his head that this too is an emissary, and dashes out of the window. Simply because Hojeda passed by a little while before! I can't tell all that goes on; it is madness, a catastrophe! If it were not for Vicente, I would blow my brains out with a revolver.... I cannot go out without having my daughter with me, and then leaving on a piece of paper where I am going.... He has ordered all the mattresses in the house to be ripped open, so as to find some of the letters which he says that I have hidden.... Finally,—but do you want to hear more? He has sent and had an iron grating put in the fireplace, for he has an idea that Hojeda comes in that way...."