The following summer I found her again. In August, I was alone in my house, a house that a feminine presence had filled for years. One afternoon, bored to death, I visited the Government Tobacco Manufactory of Seville. It was a sweltering day. I entered alone, which was a favour, in this immense harem of about five thousand women-workers, of a rather free-and-easy type.
I have said the day was terribly hot? Most of the workers were half-dressed only. It was a mixed spectacle, certainly: a sort of panorama of women at all ages. I passed along, sometimes being asked for a gift, sometimes being given a cynical pleasantry. Suddenly I recognized Concha, and asked her what brought her into that place.
“Heaven knows, I have forgotten.”
“But your convent training?”
“When girls go there through the door, they leave through the window.”
“Did you?”
“I will be honest with you. I didn’t enter at all for fear of sinning. Give me a coin, and I will sing you something while the superintendent is away from here.”
Then she told me she lived with her mother, and came to the factory when in the mood. I gave her a napoléon, and then left.
In the youth of happy men there is a moment, an instant, that chance decides. My moment came when I dropped that golden coin before that girl. It was as if I had thrown a fatal die. I date from then and there my actual life, “the life I have lived the most.” My moral ruin was then begun.