“It is very simple,” said Alzugaray, sadly; “the girl is interested in you. The eternal game of disdain has produced its effect. She has seen you show yourself indifferent toward her, speak curtly to her, and she has gone on thinking more and more about you, and now she thinks of nothing else. That is what has happened.”
“Bah! I don’t believe it. You act as if this were in a novel.”
“It’s no novel. It’s the truth.”
The next day, when Cæsar got up, the maid handed him two letters. One was from Don Calixto and said that Señor Peribáñez accepted him as candidate. It had been learned that the Duke of Castro Duro had married his landlady in England; the arrangement with the Cuban gentleman was impossible, and the poor Duke would definitely have to winter in Paris, in the prison, along with the distinguished apaches, Bibi de Montmartre and the Panther of the Batignolles.
The other letter was from Amparito.
Don Calixto’s niece told him he mustn’t believe that she hated him; if she had said anything to him, it was without bad intention; she would be very happy if all his projects were realized.
Despite his ambitious plans and the desire he had that the question of his candidacy should be definitely settled, Amparito’s letter interested him much more than Don Calixto’s.
A new, disturbing element was coming into his life, without any warning and without any reason. He said nothing about Amparito’s letter to his friend Alzugaray. He felt him to be a rival, and in spite of having no intentions of going further, the idea of rivalry between them troubled him. He did not wish to offend him by taking the attitude of a lucky man.
He went out into the street and set off for a walk on the highway.
“It is strange,” he thought, “this coarse psychology, which proves that a man and a woman, especially a woman, are not complex beings, but stupidly simple. The complex thing in a woman is not the intelligence or the soul, but instinct. Why does a woman rebuff a man who pleases her? For the same reason that the female animal repulses the male, and at the same time calls him to her.