All these figures seemed to be flying in a mad race round the room. They were a motley rabble, a whirling tornado of cudgels, legs, noses, eyeglasses, petticoats, fans and hats, whence proceeded whistling, shouts, scoffing and laughter. All humanity rammed into a cannon as large as the world, and fired off into the air in a million fragments, could not have covered the sky with a more hideous cloud.
Leon saw a figure step out of the circle and come towards him, and he suddenly felt an impulse of rage, just like that which he had felt in the morning against his brother-in-law—a rage which now no consideration of respect interfered to quell. The hateful figure that approached him was the most grotesquely monstrous of all that crazy rout; his mean smile was an insult to human reason, to decency, to virtue, to everything that distinguishes man from brutes.
“Horrible wretch!” Leon cried—or fancied he cried, rushing upon him, and seizing him by the collar. “Do you think I am afraid of you? Why do you take her from me? Yours! do you say she is yours? But I will give you a lesson and rid society of your vile presence....”
He clutched his victim with all his strength, saying:
“You have rights? I trample them under foot. You have ties? I break them. You shall soon see what I care for your rights and ties—no more than for your life, which is full of evil and disgrace. I loathe you as the embodiment of all the wickedness on earth.—Respect you? Respect the law, the sacrament which you represent as I respected them in her who is no longer of this world?—How dare you name her in the same breath with yourself? In her I respected the austerity of virtue, of exalted piety, honour, innocence, weakness and beauty. But what is there in you but corruption, lies and foulest vice?—It is in vain for you to crave my pity: pity was not made to bestow on venomous reptiles. Do not ask me to let you have your child.—Shall an angel be thrown to the dogs?—Your child loathes you, your wife hates you, I—I will murder you!”
He felt as though he were rolling down a precipice in the dark, with his victim in his grasp. Then he unconsciously sank into a troubled slumber that lasted some time. He woke in a calmer frame of mind; though still confused, he could make out surrounding objects, and by degrees saw them more distinctly. The figures on the walls were in their places, as insolently lifelike as ever, not more hideous or more pleasing than of old. Leon heard not a sound; everything was still. He looked at his watch; it was half-past eleven.
His first clear idea was that he must at once quit the house and go to his own home.
He thought of María dead, and of Pepa living,—he saw them as though they had been standing side by side in front of him; and at the same moment, as if his thought had evoked her presence, Pepa came into the room from the museum with Monina in her arms.