The Fourth Estate, vol. 2

by Armando Palacio Valdés

Don Roque then threw himself on to his bed, drew the clothes up, and with his back against the pillows, he took the glass of punch and put it to his lips. On discovering that there was a deficiency in one of the ingredients, he uttered a guttural, awful sound, and rising from the bed, he fetched the bottle of rum from his cupboard and put it on the little table by the bedside.

Then once more in bed, he gravely and solemnly proceeded, with the glass in one hand and the bottle in the other, to repair the servant's error. He took a sip of punch and then filled up the glass from the bottle, and the concoction thus strengthened was more befitting the state of agitation which possessed his mind, for under that apparent calm Don Roque's brain was wild with excitement. All the hours of the day passed before him in their sad and depressing course—the deceptions he had endured, the disappointed hopes, the heated discussions, and finally the desertion of Marcones.

And then the future. That was of the blackest description. Was he to resign the mayor's mace that he had wielded with glory so many years, to turn into a nobody without an escort, a private person, not to have the run of the Town Hall, not to pass by any of the corporation officials, and not to be able to say: "Juan, go to Rabila well, and don't let the servants be cleaning their pails there"?

If he saw a stonebreaker in the road, was he not to have the power of telling him to strike harder or gentler, to raise the ax less or more?

His feet were intensely cold. He got up two or three times to put the clothes thicker over them, but his efforts were fruitless. The contents of the bottle finally passed to the glass, and from the glass to his stomach. A pleasant heat then pervaded his inside and gradually permeated through all his members. Don Roque then felt his tongue loosen, and he began to talk to himself, very distinctly in his own opinion, but if any mortals had been in earshot they would have retreated in horror.

Sounds like all, call, mall seemed to figure most frequently in the monologue, from which a perspicacious philologue, taking into account the combination of the vowel a and the consonant l, would have deduced the probability that the word expressed by the mayor was rascal, and this would have been a more or less legitimate deduction.

At last he was silent. He felt a fiery heat in his throat, which passed to his head and face. His tongue declined to move. He experienced a sensation of physical increase of his whole being; his head especially seemed to grow; it grew in such a measureless way that it overpowered him.

At the same time the objects about him—the cupboard, bed, washstand, and the sticks standing in the corner—appeared to grow small. He seemed to hear in his head the noise of the machinery of a clock in motion, a wheel that went round swiftly, and a hammer that fell rhythmically with a metallic sound. The hammer ceased and the wheel went on.

He thought he heard strange noises in the street that petrified him with fear. Poor Don Roque did not know that his enemies were at that moment treating him to "rough music." He thought of calling the servant, but feared that the sounds were imaginary, as they had been before. And, in fact, he was confirmed in this idea by hearing a deafening clang of bells, a discordant sound in which all seemed mingled, from the largest bell of Toledo to the smallest hand-bell.

How bewildering! how fatiguing! Fortunately it ceased with a final loud clang, but it was immediately succeeded by a whistle so long and so sharp that it seemed it must break his tympanum, and he instinctively raised his hands to his ears. On the cessation of the whistle he thought that the foot of the bed went up and the head went down, until his feet were above his head, which was a most agonizing sensation. He then gave a long sigh, and his feet returned to their normal level; but as the same proceeding was repeated several times, he had to give repeated long sighs to regain his normal position.