The Grandee

by Armando Palacio Valdés

"Let me go, Manin! Let me go, ass! There will be a row! Look here, I shall scream!"

At last he put her down gently, and the maid, panting, dishevelled and frowning, so as to look more angry, said in an excited voice:

"You have no shame, Manin. If we were not in this house as we are I would smash this lamp on your face for your rudeness and insolence. But here are the servants listening to all this, and what will they say? Don't say another word, for I won't answer you."

"So you can scream now, vain little thing, after you have been in the seventh heaven," muttered Manin, in a drawling tone, looking at her angrily and pushing up his beard.

"If you don't get out of my sight, you ruffian!" exclaimed the little servant, as she looked at him with laughter in her eyes, in spite of herself.

Then Manin re-seated himself for the consumption of the rest of the bread, and to drink another glass of white wine. Josefina meanwhile sobbed in a corner, putting her wounded hands to her mouth and patting her cheeks, contused with the whalebone blows. Manin then deigned to cast a look at her.

"Don't cry, little fool, the pain of the blows will go by, and the sense will remain in your head for ever," he said, cutting a piece of bread with his clasp-knife and putting it into his mouth. "If you would like to know my opinion, the more they beat you, the more pleased you ought to be. What would you be if Concha was not kind enough to beat you well? A little ignoramus, not worth a measure of acorns, a little beast, God save the comparison. And now what will you be? As fine a woman as you can see." (He paused whilst he cut another piece of bread and chewed it so that it caused a large lump in his right cheek). "Come, if I had had masters like you have to bruise my skin with blows, I should not be an ass now; they would not call me Manin, but Don Manuel, and instead of being a miserable underling I should be going about giving myself airs, walking down Altavilla with my hands behind me like the señores, and reading the papers in the casinos." (Another pause, and another cutting of a hunch of bread). "It is nothing but just, if you will see it so. How can you learn such difficult things without a few whippings? Whoever learned daqué without being beaten? Nobody. Then if you get learning you should thank God for having put a mistress over you like an aureole. For the end will please you; you will have soft hands and delicate feet, is it not so?"

Concha, having now resumed her severe manner, seated herself and made an imperious gesture to the child to approach. It was the turn for grammar and it went worse than the history, either from want of memory or because she was upset by fear. Then the whipping recommenced; a whalebone blow now and then, then oftener and oftener. Manin, true to his pedagogical opinions, applauded with his mouth full, and cut his bread into wonderful geometrical shapes before conducting them with all solemnity to his mouth. The faults were many, the blows were the same. But at the end of the lesson Concha thought that besides the punishment at every fault there was a certain reparation due for general naughtiness, and so she had better conclude by a beating that would include everything. Therefore she jumped up from her chair, and brandishing the formidable whalebone, exclaimed:

"Now to make you study better and to open your mind! Now!"

The blows were so hard and so many that, trying to escape the torture, the little creature seized hold of the skirts of her torturer with her clenched hands. Without knowing how, perhaps through having carelessly caught hold of them, the string which held them broke and they fell off, leaving the needlewoman only in her undergarment. She gave a cry of shame and quickly pulled up the skirts. Then, without waiting to tie them on again, she cast a glance of the deepest anger at the child and left the room holding her things on with her hands.