I thanked her and excused myself. But as I could not say that I had breakfasted she said that of course I must breakfast with her, and went out to give some orders. I felt delighted, and even if I should say enthusiastic it would not be an untruth. While the maid was getting the table ready in the room where we were, we continued our chat, our mutual confidence steadily growing. All through the breakfast she treated me with a cordiality so frank and hospitable that it quite charmed me. She cut bread and meat for me with her own hands and poured out wine and water. When I wanted a dish or a plate, with provincial simplicity she would jump up and take it from the sideboard without waiting for the maid.
I told her jestingly of the grave occupation in which her cries had surprised me the night of the accident. She laughed heartily and promised to make it up to me when I came to Valencia, by cooking a paella for me by all the rules of the art.
"Not that I have the mad presumption of expecting to make you forget the tripe of Señora Ramona. I shall be satisfied if you eat a couple of platefuls."
"Why a couple? I perceive with sadness that you take me for a gross and material being. I hope to show you, in the course of time, that apart from these hours of tripe and snails, I am a man naturally spiritually-minded, poetic, and even, to some extent, delicate."
She ridiculed this, piling up my plate in most scandalous style, inviting me not to dissimulate my true condition, but to eat as if she were not present.
"Do not think of my being a lady. Fancy yourself breakfasting with a companion—the pilot, for instance."
"I have not sufficient imagination for that. The pilot is squint-eyed and lacks two teeth."
This lively and intimate chat intoxicated me more than the Bordeaux that she poured for me without ceasing. And her eyes intoxicated me more than the wine or the chat. Although we talked in whispers and checked our laughter, occasionally there escaped me an indiscreet note. Doña Cristina raised her finger to her lips. "Silence, Captain, or I shall have to sentence you to the corridor before you have half breakfasted."
She asked me to tell her something about my life. I gratified her curiosity, relating my history, which was simple enough. We discussed the pleasures of a sailor's life, which she thought superior to those of any other.
"I adore the sea, but the sea of my home above all. Here it makes me afraid and sad. If you could see how often I go to the window of our villa at Cabañal to look at it!"