My parents were delighted with the improvements that had taken place in my health, person, and deportment, and not less proud of the superiority my education and accomplishments had given me over the companions of my childhood. I was now, my fond mother declared, entitled to llamar de vos[176] the first hidalgo in the land; and, I believe, Caballeros, that, without vanity, I may say, my coming caused some little sensation in my natal town.
I was not long in discovering, however, that the place contained no fit associate for one of my stamp. Those few amongst the inhabitants whose professions had rendered some little education necessary, were, from morning to night, occupied at their respective vocations, and affected rather to treat me as a parvenu. The youths of my own age, on the other hand, were ignorant clowns, of whom I could not possibly make companions; and, with pain I make the admission, even on the authors of my being I could not now avoid looking down with some slight feeling of contempt. They were all kindness, however, and my father spared not the means of enabling me to continue the same expensive manner of life to which I had so long been accustomed.
Deprived as I now found myself of associates of my own sex—for I believe every boor in the place hated me most thoroughly—my time was exclusively devoted to the society of the other; and I need not, therefore, tell you—for most young men are aware of the expenses attendant on such intimacies—that my father’s purse was drawn heavily upon to meet my increasing exigencies.
Meanwhile my legal studies were prosecuted with no great assiduity. Don Benito, who, whilst my father’s money was fresh in his pocket, had, for the sake of appearances, treated me with affected kindness, soon threw off the mask of hypocrisy, and neglected no occasion of making me aware of the little interest he took in my welfare. The soft and speaking eyes of his fair daughter told me, however, that she entertained a kindlier feeling towards me; an avowal which was quickly followed by the admission that I was the sole possessor of her affections.
I must make the ungallant confession, Caballeros, that expediency was the only incentive I had for encouraging the passion of the lovely girl. My life had been too dissolute to admit so pure an affection as her’s readily to take root within my breast; but I saw in it the only sure stepping-stone to greatness—money; for Don Benito was a wealthy man, Alitéa his only daughter.
Whilst yet undecided as to the best means to be adopted for the accomplishment of my purpose (for it was a matter requiring some consideration, since I was perfectly aware the crafty old lawyer would never consent to our union, my dissipated mode of living having involved me in pecuniary difficulties of which he could not well be ignorant), events occurred which, by opening other prospects to me, for a time drove Alitéa altogether out of my thoughts.
The trifling sum that my father’s frugal habits had enabled him to lay by, had been entirely swallowed up in placing me with Don Benito; and to meet my increasing expenditure, which he fully believed was merely money put out to interest, he conceived that increased exertions on his part were necessary. Against this—since in replying to my mother’s objections to my following the plough, he had ever maintained that agricultural pursuits were of all others the most healthy—I could have nothing to say. But these exertions soon proved too much for the old man’s strength, and he contracted a painful disorder, from which, after a tedious confinement, it became a mercy to be relieved.
I mention these circumstances, Caballeros, not for the purpose of repelling the charge brought against me by my kind fellow-townsmen, of having wilfully accelerated my parent’s death, a crime of which, God be praised, my conscience is quite clear, but to show the ill will they entertained towards me; a feeling to which, in the course of my story, I shall again have occasion to refer.
I had always expected, on the death of my father, to find myself in the possession of a comfortable independence, as he had ever represented to me that such would be the case.
But, during his protracted illness, every thing had gone wrong at the farm: the cattle died; those of our neighbours intruded upon our crops; the vines remained unpruned; the olives rotted upon the ground; the property, in fact, had become a perfect wilderness; and, to obtain money to defray the expenses of my parent’s funeral, I was obliged to sell the implements of husbandry upon the farm; those being the only property which could be immediately rendered available.