So pure was the white of her forehead, the azure of her eyes.
Conversing with the fair girl was a young man, who stood with one hand resting on the causeuse of blue velvet where she sat and the other caressing the precious trinkets of his gold chain. In his affected pronunciation a slight foreign accent was noticeable, despite the fact that his look and bearing were as Spanish as those of the Cid or Bernardo del Carpio.
A gentleman of mature years, tall, thin, of distinguished and courteous manners, who seemed seriously preoccupied with the operation of sweetening to the exact point his cup of tea, completed the group nearest the fireplace, in whose warmth I sat down to tell this human history. It seems like a fable, but it is not; one could make a book of it; I have done so several times in imagination. Nevertheless, I will tell it in few words, since for him to whom it is given to comprehend it, these few will be more than enough.
Andrés, for so the hero of my tale was called, was one of those men whose hearts abound with feeling for which they have found no outlet, and with love that has no object on which to spend itself.
An orphan almost from his birth, he was left in the care of relatives. I do not know the details of his childhood; I can only say that whenever it was mentioned, his face would cloud and he would exclaim, with a sigh: “That is over now.”
We all say the same, sadly recalling bygone joys. But was this the explanation of his words? I repeat that I do not know; but I suspect not.
As soon as he was grown, he launched out into the world. Though I would not calumniate it, the fact remains that the world for the poor, and especially for a certain class of the poor, is not a Paradise nor anything like it. Andrés was, as the saying goes, one of those people who rise, most days, with nothing to look forward to but twenty-four hours more. Judge then, my readers, what would be the state of a spirit all idealism, all love, put to the no less difficult than prosaic task of seeking our daily bread.
Yet sometimes, sitting on the edge of his lonely bed, his elbows on his knees and his head between his hands, he would exclaim:
“If I only had something to love with all my heart! A wife, a horse, even a dog!”
As he had not a copper to spare, it was not possible for him to get anything,—not any object on which to satisfy his hunger to love. This waxed to such a point that in its acute attacks he came to feel an affection for the wretched closet where he slept, the scanty furniture that met his needs, his very landlady, that patron saint who was his evil genius.