Gonzalo's face then became distorted with fury, his lips wreathed with fierce sarcasm, and his eyes flamed.
"Ah!" he roared, more than said, "take the friendship of this rake, for he is a rake, and all Spain knows it; you think more of it than of your husband's happiness; but don't think for an instant that because I am not a duke and a grandee that I don't know how to protect my honor! Look here! Look here! This is the respect that I have for the duke."
And at these words he gave the picture a kick which leveled it to the ground with a great noise. Then he seized hold of it, with his teeth set, his eyes bloodshot, and a prey to one of those paroxysms of rage to which powerful phlegmatic people are sometimes subject. The canvas was soon in pieces; and Ventura, utterly dumfounded, but with the daring of a spoiled woman, gasped out:
"Brute! Brute!"
The tone of this insult was so fierce with rage that Gonzalo raised his head as if he had been struck with a red-hot iron; and springing upon her, he seized her by the arm. The girl uttered a cry of agony—her husband's hand held her with a steel-like grip that went to the very bone.
"Forgive her, Gonzalo, forgive her!" exclaimed Doña Paula, intervening.
The infuriated man turned his head without loosening his hold of his wife. At the sight of his mother-in-law, in whose face, now convulsed with terror, illness had made such cruel ravages, gazing at him with imploring eyes and hands clasped in entreaty, his hand let go of Ventura and fell to his side.
He had no time to say anything. Doña Paula, without looking at her daughter, dragged him by the coat-sleeve, saying:
"Come, my son, come; I will settle this matter, and calm you down."
And Gonzalo, overwhelmed with shame, let himself be taken away like an automaton. On reaching her room the good lady locked the door.