He persevered in this for two years without seeing her. Instead, he met students and pages whom he had known as a child, who now kept him posted in regard to all affairs of the higher circles which he no longer frequented. From them he learned that Elena was still in France. Of course none of them suspected that at home Tito was a cobbler. All believed him to be the beneficiary of a legacy from the Count of Rionuevo, who had manifested too much affection for him in life, for them to suppose that he had neglected to provide for his future.
So time passed, and one feast day, on the date mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, he was waiting at the door of the cathedral. He saw two elegantly dressed ladies arrive with a grand retinue of servants, who passed so close to him, that in one of them he was able to recognize his bitter enemy, the Countess of Rionuevo. He was about to conceal himself in the crowd of spectators, when her companion raised her veil, and—oh happiness!—he recognized his beloved Elena, the sweet cause of his bitter sorrows. The poor boy approached her, uttering a frantic cry of joy.
Elena, recognizing him at once, exclaimed with the same tenderness as of old:
“Tito!”
But the Countess, grasping her arm, turned toward Tito, and said in a low voice, “I told you that I was satisfied with my present shoemaker. Leave me in peace!”
Tito, turning deathly white, fell senseless to the stone floor, as Elena and the Countess entered the church.
Two or three students who had witnessed the scene, laughed uproariously, without thoroughly understanding it.
He was carried home, there to suffer another blow; his old friend, who constituted his entire family, had died of old age during his absence. He was seized with an attack of brain fever which brought him to the very jaws of death. When he returned to consciousness, he found that a neighbor, poorer even than himself, had taken entire charge of him during his long illness; but had been obliged to sell his furniture, his tools, his books, his home, and even his holiday attire, to pay for his medicines and physician.
At the end of two months, covered with rags, hungry, weakened by illness, penniless, and without family or friends, without even that old friend who had loved him as a mother, and, worse than all, without the hope of ever approaching his dreamed of and blessed Elena, Tito abandoned his home (already the property of another shoemaker), and took by chance the first road, without knowing where he was going, what to do, to whom to apply, how to work or how to live.