“Poor Don Frederico!” she said.
Momo, according to his bad habits, took pleasure in conveying the news of this marriage to Ramon Perez.
“Really!” cried the barber, in consternation.
“You are sad; I am much more sad in seeing that there are people who ought to be beaten for the absurdity of their tastes. See a little! To be smitten of this saucebox! but Don Frederico proves the proverb, ‘Late married, badly married.’ ”
“I am not sad,” replied Ramon Perez, “because Marisalada is loved by Don Frederico, but because she loves this stranger who has hair of hemp and fishes’ eyes. Why does not the ingrate recollect this sentence, ‘Who marries late becomes either a dupe or a deceiver.’ ”
“It will not be he who will be the first to deceive. For as to Don Frederico, he is a brave man, nothing can be said to the contrary; but this vixen has bewitched him with her singing, which lasts from the rising to the setting sun. I have already said to him: Don Frederico, listen to the proverb, ‘Take a house with a hearth: take a wife who knows how to spin.’ He has not attended to either: it is a misfortune. As to thee, Ramon Perez, they have simply made a great mistake.”
“That is easily seen,” replied the barber, giving so hasty a turn to the key of his guitar that the treble-string broke: “he whom we would drive from our house must be a stranger. But you ought to know, Momo, that I care for very little. The year will finish one day, and if the king is dead, long live the king!”
Then he commenced to strike his guitar with rage, singing with bombastic voice:
“Cold creature! what of thy contempts,
My heart, no longer irate, is now cured;
Stains which no mulberry exempts,
By the mulberry green are no longer endured.
* * * *
“Love is fled! three pirouettes, and then—
Crack! and my happy days return;
I have gold to please young girls I ween,
To purchase other loves I’ll learn.”