Feeling as though waking from a beautiful dream, or as if the victim of a horrible nightmare, Tito, weeping bitterly, gathered together what clothes were left him, and abandoned the no longer hospitable roof. Poor, without family, and no home to shelter him, he suddenly remembered that in a certain alley of the Vistillas quarter, he owned a cobbler’s stall, and some shoemaker’s tools, which had been left in charge of an old woman of the neighborhood, in whose humble home he had found a tender welcome and even sweet-meats, during the life of the virtuous Juan Gil.
He went there; the old woman still lived; the tools were in good condition, and during those years, the rent of the stall had brought in some seven doubloons: these the good woman gave him, not without having previously moistened them with tears of joy.
Tito decided to remain there, to devote himself to his trade, to forget completely the riding, the fencing, the dancing and the chess, but by no means Elena de Monteclaro. This last would have been impossible, although he fully appreciated that he was dead to her, or that she was to him; but before drawing the funeral veil of hopelessness over that inextinguishable love, he wished to say a last “adieu,” to her who had been for so long the very soul of his soul. One evening therefore he dressed himself carefully, and set out for the Duke’s palace.
A travelling coach, drawn by four mules, was before the door. Elena, followed by her father, entered it.
“Tito!”—she exclaimed, sweetly, on seeing him.
“Drive on!”—shouted the Duke to the coachman, without hearing Elena, or seeing Rionuevo’s former page.
The mules dashed off.
The unhappy boy extended his arms towards his love without having a chance to even say “good-bye.”
“Good night!” growled the porter—“I must close the doors!”