“What a chance for you, Ramon! Buy yourself a patch of land, and set to work like a man, and show Carmen you are worthy of her.”
“Work! while I have gold enough to last for ever? Not I, indeed!”
“It won’t last for ever, Ramon,” rustled out another falling leaf.
But Ramon heeded not. Some of his treasure he spent rationally enough, I must say, in having the old cottage repaired, and the old vine tended; but the bulk he squandered in excesses, and in a few years was as badly off as ever.
Want once more stared him in the face, and once more he resolved to put an end to his existence.
“You are not fit to die!” said the patriarchal vine; but Ramon hastened away, he had not the courage to encounter the dreadful thought.
He snatched up a rusty, disused spade—he was out of conceit with hanging. This time he would dig a deep hole in the ground, and thrust himself in head foremost, and stifle himself that way.
Digging was hard work for arms so unused to labour, but he had never thought to find it so hard as it proved. He had not taken out a dozen spadefuls when the spade seemed to refuse to enter the ground any more. Had his arms grown so stiff they could not move? Or was the earth so hard he could not break it?
The evening breeze rustled by, bearing with it some leaves of the old vine; and as they passed they whispered,—
“You can’t die when you will, Ramon! Only be content to work as hard as now in a good cause, and you won’t want to die till your time comes.”