"Eh?" he answered, turning his head toward Agonde.
"How silent you are, my boy! What do you think of the Minister?"
"What would you have me think of him?"
"And the Señora? Come, you have noticed her, I warrant. She wears black silk stockings, like the priests. When she was mounting the donkey——"
"I am going to take a gallop as far as Vilamorta. Do you care to join me, Saturnino?"
"Gallop with this mule? I should arrive there with my stomach in my mouth. Gallop you, if you have a fancy for doing so."
The nag galloped for half a league or so, urged by his rider's whip. As they drew near the canebrake by the river, Segundo slackened his horse's gallop to a very slow walk. It was now almost dark and the cool mists rose, moist and clinging, from the bosom of the Avieiro. Segundo remembered that it was two or three days since he had put his foot in Leocadia's house. No doubt the schoolmistress was now fretting herself to death, weeping and watching for him. This thought brought sudden balm to Segundo's wounded spirit. How tenderly Leocadia loved him! With what joy did she welcome him! How deeply his poetry, his words, moved her! And he—why was it that he did not share her ardor? Of this exclusive, this absolute, boundless love, Segundo had never deigned to accept even the half; and of all the tender terms of endearment invented by the muse he chose for Leocadia the least poetical, the least romantic; as we separate the gold and silver in our purse from the baser coin, setting aside for the beggar the meanest copper, so did Segundo dispense with niggard hand the treasures of his love. A hundred times had it happened to him, in his walks through the country, to fill his hat with violets, with hyacinths and branches of blackberry blossoms, only to throw them all into the river on reaching the village, in order not to carry them to Leocadia.