“We will make a complete thing of it. As for this sort of ladies, I have more than a thousand, a regular seraglio, in San Juan de los Reyes, a seraglio which from this time on I put quite at your service, since, it would seem, a woman of stone is the same to you as a woman of flesh.”
“Oh, no!” responded the captain, not nettled in the slightest by the laughter of his companions. “I am sure that they cannot be like mine. Mine is a true Castilian dame of high degree, who by a miracle of sculpture appears not to have been buried in a sepulchre, but still, body and soul, to kneel upon the lid of her own tomb, motionless, with hands joined in attitude of prayer, drowned in an ecstasy of mystic love.”
“You are so plausible that you will end by making us believe in the fable of Galatea.”
“For my part, I admit that I had always supposed it nonsense, but since last night I begin to comprehend the passion of the Greek sculptor.”
“Considering the peculiar circumstances of your new lady, I presume you would have no objection to presenting us. As for me, I vow that already I am dead with longing to behold this paragon. But—what the devil!—one would say that you do not wish to introduce us. Ha, ha, ha! It would be a joke indeed if we should find you jealous.”
“Jealous!” the captain hastened to reply. “Jealous—of men, no; but yet see to what lengths my madness reaches. Close beside the image of this woman is a warrior, also of marble, an august figure, as lifelike as herself,—her husband, without doubt. Well, then! I am going to make a clean breast of it, jeer at my folly as you may,—if I had not feared being taken for a lunatic, I believe I should have broken him to pieces a hundred times over.”
A fresh and yet more riotous outburst of laughter from the officers greeted this original revelation on the part of the eccentric lover of the marble lady.
“We will take no refusal. We must see her,” cried some.
“Yes, yes, we must know if the object of such devotion is as unique as the passion itself,” added others.
“When shall we come together to take a drink in the church where you lodge?” demanded the rest.