The two men shook hands, and Quentin stepped into the street.
“The old man is my grandfather,” said Quentin, “that’s just what he is. His emotion, his harrowed look—that’s just what he is.”
Perhaps the best thing to do would be to ask his mother exactly what the circumstances of his birth were; but he feared to offend her.
He soon forgot about that, and began to think about the blond-haired girl Rafaela. She was pretty. Indeed she was! Her clear, soft eyes; her pleasant smile; and above all, her opaque voice had gone straight to Quentin’s heart: but as Quentin was not a dreamer, but a Bœotian, a Horatian, as he himself had remarked, he associated with Rafaela’s soft, blue eyes, the ancestral home, the beautiful garden, and the wealth which her family must still possess.
Quentin devoted the days following this visit to cogitating upon this point.
Rafaela was an admirable prize—pretty, pleasant, and aristocratic. He must attempt the conquest. True, he was an illegitimate child. He had a desire to laugh at that thought, it seemed so operatic to him: now he could sing the aria from Il Trovatore:
Deserto sulla terra.
Bastard or no bastard, he considered that the thing was possible. He was tall, handsome, and above all, strong. In Eton, he had noticed that after all, the greatest attraction in a man for women is strength.
They said that the Marquis’ house was going to ruin: he would save it from ruin and restore it splendidly. Then—into the street with those who got in his way! It was a great plan.
Truly, Rafaela was an admirable prize. To marry her, and live in that sumptuous house with the two sisters until the place was completely repaired, would be a life indeed! He would write his school friends and tell them about his marriage to an Andalusian descendant of the Cid, and describe the patios filled with orange trees.... Then he could say with his poet: “Let them serve us quickly this bottle of Falernus in the neighbouring gorge.” After that ... then came new chapters, as yet scarcely outlined in his imagination....