She left the place and ran like mad to the wood, where, arrived at a solitary spot, she sits at the foot of a tree and leans her head against the trunk. With her eyes fixed on space, her face changed and sad, and her hands crossed upon her knee, her whole attitude was expressive of dumb, despairing agony.
The hour for dinner arrived. Two parallel tables had been arranged in the large salon on the ground floor.
The dispersed party reassembled at the magic word of dinner shouted to the four winds by the rough voice of Manin and the silvery one of Manuel Antonio.
When poetic sentiments have their course in the open air in the middle of woods they greatly facilitate the secretion of the gastric juices. So the nymphs as well as the fauns did full justice to the olives, the cucumbers, and the slices of sausage before sitting down to the tables. By the unanimous voice of the military and clergy, worthily represented by Fray Diego, the task of giving each guest his seat was to be undertaken by the bride.
The merry, wayward Emilita, transformed suddenly into a very grave matron, filled the office with a tact and amiability that won her the approbation of the assembly; every girl was given the youth she liked best as a partner, and to every older person, was accorded the companion who was most congenial in character and tastes.
But mad was the applause when she put Lieutenant Rubio between the two Señoritas de Meré. She left this facetious act to the last, which cleverness saved the officer from thinking it was intentional.
Finding himself the victim of such a trick the military man was put out, and was even on the point of protesting against this arrangement of Emilita, but he controlled himself against this outrage of all the laws of gallantry; and as he was taking his place it occurred to him to parody the words of Napoleon as he looked at his two neighbours: "From the height of these two seats forty centuries contemplate me."
This remark won the applause of the company, and put the injured creature into a good humour, and he got on so well with his little old friends that he was that evening voted a capital sort of fellow.
Moro was seated by the side of the count, and during the dinner he impressed on him the advantage of having a billiard-table in the palace of the Grange. He knew every make, but the best was indisputably that of Tutau of Barcelona, and he praised up the article as if he were a traveller for the house. Luis' face showed his disappointment and vexation at not being by Amalia, but Emilita neither dared to put him there, nor by Fernanda. The first would have been a scandal, the second a vexation to both.
They feasted like at a banquet in the "Iliad." But the Achilles of this extensive repast was Manin, the rough Manin who, according to those that were next to him, consumed no less than eleven calabashes of wine. Certainly Manin deserved being called, if not a Sueve, as that would offend Saleta, at least a Lombard. He talked and halloed as if he were in the street.