There was an autopsy; no organic trouble was found. Ah! if it were possible to dissect the soul, how many deaths similar to this would be explained!
“And did he actually die of that?” exclaimed the youth, who was still playing with the charms that hung from his watch chain, as I finished my story.
I glanced at him as if to say: “Does it seem to you so little?” He continued with a certain air of profundity: “Strange! I know what it is to suffer; when in the last races my Herminia stumbled, killed the jockey and broke a leg, the misfortune of that animal vexed me horribly; but, frankly, not so much as that—not so much as that.”
I was still regarding him with astonishment, when I heard a melodious and slightly veiled voice, the voice of the girl with the azure eyes.
“Strange, indeed! I love my Medoro dearly,” she said, dropping a kiss on the snout of the sluggish and blear-eyed lap-dog, who gave a little grunt, “but if he should die, or somebody should kill him, I do not believe that I would go mad nor anything like it.”
My astonishment was passing into stupefaction; these people had not understood me, nor wished to understand me.
Finally I turned to the gentleman who was taking tea, for at his years he might be expected to be somewhat more reasonable.
“And you? how does it seem to you?” I asked.
“I will tell you,” he replied. “I am married; I loved my wife; I have, it seems to me, a regard for her still; there came up between us a domestic unpleasantness, that by its publicity forced me to demand satisfaction; a duel followed; I had the good luck to wound my adversary, an excellent fellow, as full of jest and wit as any man alive, with whom I am still in the habit of taking coffee occasionally in the Iberia. Since then I have ceased to live with my wife, and have devoted myself to travel.—When I am in Madrid, I stay with her as a friend visiting a friend; and all this has taken place without any violent passions, without any great emotions, without any extraordinary sufferings. After this slight sketch of my character and of my life, what shall I say to you about these phenomenal explosions of feeling except that all this seems to me strange, very strange?”
When he had finished speaking, the blonde girl and the young man who was making love to her looked over together an album of Gabarni’s caricatures. In those few moments the elder gentleman treated himself with exquisite enjoyment to his third cup of tea.