The Fourth Estate, vol. 2

by Armando Palacio Valdés

Naturally our handsome youth felt rather qualmish under the circumstances, and he would have given his carriage and horses to have had eyes at the back of his head. He made the best of those he had, and whenever he went out on foot he exhausted himself in looking about him. But confidence came with time, for as Valentina scarcely ever left home, and never frequented balls and fairs since her trouble, nobody had seen her. So Pablito, never meeting her on the street, felt emboldened by the suggestion of Piscis to go to the festival of St. Anthony.

Thus they mounted early, and took the wide, dusty Lancian road, shaded for some distance from the town by majestic giant elms. The road inclined, without being very steep, and on both sides was the smiling district of Sarrio, bordered by two or three lines of undulating hills, with the mountains of Narcin in the distance rising above the valley of Lancia still lying in mist.

Looking back after going some distance, the beautiful town was seen bathed in the sunlight, which brightened the white fronts of the houses, while the vast expanse of the sea, touched by the oblique rays of the rising sun, presented a milky-white appearance.

The horses of our equestrians, in the pride of their beautiful breed and their bright, shining backs, caracoled incessantly, which ostentatious display of their muscular power in the morning light raised clouds of dust. The work-girls who were making their way to the hermitage grew impatient, and chaffed the riders more from vexation at the dust than from fear of the horses; and taunts in somewhat bad taste were cast at the severe Piscis, who turned a deaf ear to them, so absorbed was he in the contemplation of the hoofs of the horses, as their right elevation had been entrusted to his training.

"Bah! the road is too narrow for him!"

"I say, parson, don't kick up such a dust! On horseback you think yourself somebody, but you look like a puppy-dog. You fancy yourself a duke, and you look like a monkey."

They did not interfere with Pablito. The bizarre youth exercised the same fascination over the work-girls as he did over the young ladies. Not only were they attracted by his fine figure, his gallantry and his riches, but also, and perhaps chiefly, by his conquests. The number of adorers he had had in all classes made an aureole of glory round his head. There had been much talk against him among the artisans on account of the affair with Valentina; they called him false, traitor, rogue; but all of them, even the friends of the victim, admired him in secret, and would have required little persuasion to fall into his arms, much as they swore and declared that she had been very foolish to think anything of that flirt.

Pablito pursued his way in a serious mood, also busy with his skittish quadruped. Nevertheless, he occasionally deigned to smile slightly, and this suspicion of a smile so excited the girls that they threw additional fire and wit into their attacks on the invulnerable Piscis.

About two miles on there was a beautiful open green space crossed by the road, which was to be the scene of the festivities in the afternoon, when the people came from the town and the others returned from the hermitage. To go to the hermitage one had to leave the highroad and take the narrow, steep paths bound by little stone walls covered with briers. A mile further on one came on to another open space on the top of the little hill where the shrine stood. The view from thence was beautiful and unequaled. There was an immense expanse of seacoast, not flat, but hilly, planted in some places with maize, in others with corn, and in most places only with grass, and intersected by the long, dusty road of Lancia, with its dark, level line of gigantic elms terminating in the pink and white line of the town.

By the shrine young women from the neighborhood, with more than one satin-cheeked, ruddy-lipped peasant girl, were selling milk in little earthenware mugs. There were also tables covered with cloths spread with bizcochos (milk biscuits flavored with cinnamon) and other sugar pastry of ancient renown. The chief feature of the festival was to drink milk in the morning at the hermitage, play with the mugs, and then break them by rolling them down the hill. At twelve o'clock they ate the provisions brought with them, and then repaired to the walnut grove, the usual scene of the gathering. Pablito did not omit a single item of the program. He bought more than a dozen mugs of milk and a great quantity of biscuits, with which he laid siege to his friends, and then played with them so roughly that they often lost their footing and he fell with them onto the ground, to the great delight of the onlookers. He was most assiduous in his attentions to a very pretty, dark young girl, daughter of Maroto the policeman, who sold fish in the market-place, to whom the reader will recollect Periquito said, in the pit of the theatre, "Ramona, I love you," to the great amusement of Piscis and Pablo.