“I was going to say that I, if I found myself the possessor of a fortune, should be a model gentleman, and might even be known to posterity as the Illustrious Cimarra. For is it not a matter of course, a phrase ready coined?—Tom, Dick and Harry are Illustrious nowadays.”
“Though you may try to conceal it, I see some remains of shame in you,” said Roch. “Your laxity of morals is not as great as you try to make the world believe.”
“Everything is relative, as my friend Fontán always says in jest,” replied Federico shrugging his shoulders. “You cannot judge off-hand, in that light and easy way, of a man like me who lives with the rich and is poor himself. Get that well into your head. I talk to you with perfect frankness. My projects after all are as yet merely visions—sketches, my dear fellow. We shall see—I flatter myself I have made a good beginning. Time will show. Some day perhaps when you have quite forgotten me, lost in the bliss of pedagogic matrimony, you may hear that that reprobate Cimarra has found a wife. We all have to come to it—sooner or later. Even a poor devil like me has his schemes and his philosophy. We are all tortoises together, but some have more shell to cover them than I have.—Do not take it into your head that I am indifferent to the moral graces of my wife—nor that I propose to marry a monster. I shall have a virtuous wife, my learned friend, thoroughly respectable, take my word for it, and a fine family of children and grand-children.”
“Then you have made your choice.”
“I have.—But I must warn you that I make no great point of personal beauty. I am not like you; I have a soul above being caught by a pair of fine eyes and a mouth that time can only spoil. Beauty is only skin deep. It lasts, as the poet says ‘l’espace d’un matin.’ But she has a pleasant and attractive expression, distingué manners, a quantum of dignity, a quantum of liveliness, wit and even chic—Education? Well nothing much to speak of, but we do not intend to set up for Professors. She has a great deal of good in her with a spice of the devil too; she has wild ways occasionally, freaks of temper, habits of extravagance....”
Leon turned pale and fixed a gloomy eye on his companion.
“What do I care if she smashes a lot of rubbishy plates, or cuts a Murillo into strips, or makes mince-meat of her lace? There are some things in which no husband should interfere.”
Leon sat staring dully at the green cloth of the table on which he had propped his elbows.
“Mercy, how the time goes, man!” he exclaimed rising abruptly and throwing open the window. “It is day!”