"This year's crop is exactly like the crop of '61."
"Exactly," assented Mendez. "As for the Rebeco, it will not give a load less this year, and the Grilloa—I don't know but that it will give us six or seven more. It is a great vine, the Grilloa!"
After these cheerful prognostications of a rich harvest, Mendez described with satisfaction to his attentive audience some improvements which he had introduced into the cultivation of the vine. He had most of his casks secured with iron hoops; they were more expensive than wooden ones, but they lasted longer and they saved the troublesome labor of making new hoops for each harvest; he was thinking too, by way of experiment, of setting up a wine-press, doing away with the repulsive spectacle of the trampling of the grapes by human feet, and in order that the pressed skins and the pulp of the grapes might not go to waste, he would distill from them a refined alcohol which Agonde would buy from him at its weight in gold.
Lulled by the grave voices discussing important agricultural questions on the balcony, Don Victoriano, somewhat fatigued by his expedition to the vineyards, sat smoking in the rocking-chair, buried in painful meditations. Since his return from the springs he had been growing weaker day by day; the temporary improvement had vanished; the debility, the unnatural appetite, the thirst, and the desiccation of the body had increased. He remembered that Sanchez del Abrojo had told him that a slight perspiration would be of the greatest benefit to him, and when he observed, after he had been drinking the waters for a few days, the re-establishment of this function, his joy knew no bounds. But what was his terror when he found that his shirt, stiff and hard, adhered to his skin as if it had been soaked in syrup. He touched a fold of the sleeve with his lips and perceived a sweetish taste. It was plain! He perspired sugar! The glucose secretion was, then, uncontrollable, and by a tremendous irony of fate all the bitterness of his existence had come to end in this strange elaboration of sweet substances.
For some days past he had noticed another alarming symptom. His sight was becoming affected. As the aqueous humor of the eye dried up the crystalline lens became clouded, producing the cataract of diabetes. Don Victoriano had chills. He regretted now having put himself into the homicidal hands of Tropiezo and drunk the waters. There was not a doubt but that he was being wrongly treated. From this day forth a strict regimen, a diet of fruits, fecula, and milk. To live, to live, but for a year, and to be able to hide his malady! If the electors saw their candidate blind and dying, they would desert to Romero. The humiliation of losing the coming election seemed to him intolerable.
Bursts of silvery laughter, and youthful exclamations proceeding from the garden, changed the current of his thoughts. Why was it that Nieves did not perceive the serious condition of her husband's health? He wished to dissemble before the whole world, but before his wife——Ah, if his wife belonged to him she ought to be beside him now, consoling and soothing him by her caresses instead of diverting herself and frolicking among the camellias, like a child. If she was beautiful and fresh and her husband sickly, so much the worse for her. Let her put up with it, as was her duty. Bah! What nonsense! Nieves did not love him, had never loved him!
The noise and laughter below increased. Victorina and Teresa, the verses being exhausted, had proposed a game of hide-and-seek. Victorina was crying at every moment, "Teresa's it!" "Segundo's it!"
The garden was very well adapted for this exercise because of its almost labyrinthine intricacy, owing to the fact of its being laid out in sloping terraces supported on walls and separated by rows of umbrageous trees, communicating with each other by uneven steps, as is the case with all the estates in this hilly country. Thus it was that the play was very noisy, as the seeker had great difficulty in finding those who were hiding.
Nieves endeavored to hide herself securely, through laziness so as not to have to run after the others. Chance provided her with a superb hiding-place, a large lemon tree situated at one end of a terrace, near some steps which afforded an easy means of escape. She hid herself here in the densest part of the foliage, drawing her light gown closely around her so that it might not betray her. She had been only a few moments in her hiding-place when a shadow passed before her and a voice murmured softly:
"Nieves!"