Poor? But was not this tower his? Febrer replied with a smile. Bah! Four old stones that were falling apart; an unproductive hill, which would be worth something only if the peasant should cultivate it. But the latter insisted; there was the property in Majorca, which, even though it were somewhat encumbered, was much—much!
And he extended his arms with a gesture indicating immensity, as if no one could measure the fortune of Jaime, adding convincingly:
"A Febrer is never poor. You can never be that. Better days will come."
Jaime ceased trying to make him realize his poverty. If he thought him rich so much the better. Thus those youths, who knew no broader horizon than that of the island, could not say that he was a ruined man seeking to marry into Pèp's family in order to recover the lands of Can Mallorquí.
Why should the peasant be so surprised at his desire to marry Margalida? In the end it was nothing more than the repetition of an eternal history, that of the disguised and vagabond king falling in love with the shepherdess and giving her his hand. He was no king, neither was he in disguise, but in a situation of absolute need.
"I have heard that story," said Pèp. "It was often told me when I was a child, and I have told it to my own children. I won't say that it never happened so, but that was in other times—other times, very long ago, when animals had speech."
According to Pèp, the most remote antiquity, and also the elysian state of man, was always that joyous time "when the animals had speech."
But now—now he, although he could not read, informed himself of the doings in the world when he went to San José on Sundays and talked with the secretary of the pueblo, and other lettered persons who read the newspapers. Now-a-days kings married queens, and shepherdesses married shepherds; everyone with his kind. The good old times were over.
"But do you know whether or not Margalida loves me? Are you sure that all this seems to her a wild dream as it does to you?"
Pèp maintained a long silence, one hand beneath his hat and the silk kerchief, which he wore in womanish manner, scratching his crisp gray curls. He smiled knavishly, with an expression of scorn, as if rejoicing over the inferiority in which dwells the woman of the fields.