“Use plenty of stick on him,” said one authority.
“Don’t give him much to eat,” advised a blacksmith.
The horse was still unruly. “Bah!” at last exclaimed his owner. “Let him eat what he likes and do as he chooses.” The horse was not old, and now began to fatten and grow more docile. It is true that he still had his whims, and that nobody but Andrés could mount him; but his master said: “So I shall not be teased to lend him; and as for his oddities, each of us will get accustomed to those of the other.” And they came to such a good understanding that Andrés knew when the horse felt like doing a thing and when not, and as for the horse, the voice of his master was enough to make him take a leap, stand still, or set off at a gallop, swift as a hurricane.
Of the dog we need say nothing; he came to be so friendly with his new comrade that neither could go out, even to drink, without the other. From this time on, when Andrés set off at a gallop in a cloud of dust on the Carabanchel road, with his dog frisking along beside him, dashing ahead to turn back and hunt for him, or letting him pass to scamper up and overtake him, he believed himself the happiest of men.
Time went by; our young man was rich, or almost rich.
One day, after a long gallop, he alighted, tired out, near a tree and stretched himself in its shade.
It was a spring day, bright and blue,—one of those days in which men breathe voluptuously the warm air impregnated with passion, in which the blowing of the wind comes to the ear like distant harmonies, in which the clear horizons are outlined in gold, and there float before our eyes shining motes of I know not what, motes like transparent forms that follow us, encompass us and intoxicate us with sadness and with happiness at once.
“I dearly love these two beings,” exclaimed Andrés as he reclined there stroking his dog with one hand and with the other giving to his horse a handful of grass, “dearly; but yet there is a vacancy in my heart which has never been filled; I still have it in me to lavish a love greater, holier, purer. Decidedly I need a wife.”
At that moment there passed along the road a young girl with a water-jar upon her head.
Andrés was not thirsty, but yet he begged a drink of water. The girl stopped to offer it to him, and did so with such gentle grace that our youth comprehended perfectly one of the most patriarchal episodes of the Bible.