Robledo looked his astonishment at his friend’s words. Several minutes passed before he attempted to reply. It was obvious that Torre Bianca was in terror of his answer! And to avoid hearing it, he began relating the whole story of his relations with Elena.
Robledo had heard a part of this history when he was in Paris; how the marqués had met her in London, the high rank her family held in Russia at the court of the Czars, and so on.... But now the speaker’s tone was quite changed, as though Torre Bianca himself had his doubts about the authenticity of that past in which, up to that very day, he had had complete faith, and about which he had always shown a great deal of pride.
Furthermore, between the lines of his narrative, Federico was revealing new episodes to his friend. Apparently the events of the past stood out in clearer relief now, and his attention was caught by details that until then had passed unnoticed. There had always been in his house an intimate friend, a favored friend, whom his wife treated with the utmost confidence, asserting that she had known him since the days when she was living with her distinguished family. And when one “friend” went away, another appeared ... but the place was never vacant. Twice the marqués had fought duels for his wife’s honor, as a result of her being calumniated by men who but a short time before had been frequent visitors in her drawing-room. And with remorse he recalled that his antagonist in one of these duels had been a friend of his whom he had seriously wounded.
“I have told you the whole story of my life with this woman,” he said. “At least all that I am sure of concerning her life. All the rest is what she herself says ... and I don’t know whether I am to believe it or not.... I even doubt what she says about her nationality and her name. I told her frankly everything about myself ... and she gave me back lies ... lies ... lies....”
Again he looked anxiously at Robledo, hoping that the latter would give him some faith in what he had once believed.
Like a drowning man, the marqués was grasping at straws as he sank. But Robledo looked away, and gave an ambiguous shrug.
“Since a few hours ago I have been looking at things with new eyes. Oh God! The cruel glances of those poor people when I opened the window yesterday! And today during the funeral ... I can’t tell you what torment I endured!... And I, who never in my whole life have been afraid of anyone, I couldn’t meet the hostile eyes of those workmen ... and what was worse, some of them were mocking and contemptuous. Poor Moreno kept taking me aside, and talking very loud so that I wouldn’t hear the things people were saying behind me.... He didn’t know that I noticed everything he was doing to protect me.... But this afternoon I felt so overwhelmed, that I thought of you, my friend ... and I thought of my poor old mother as though I were still a child. She had deprived herself of everything so that her son might preserve the honor of his race! And her son ends up by being the laughing-stock of a workmen’s camp, in a wild uncivilized corner of the globe.... Oh, how shameful!”
He covered his eyes with his hands as if to shut out the cruel spectacle. Then he looked up to ask with breathless anxiety,
“You, who are my only friend, and who knew something of my life in Paris, do you believe that Fontenoy was my wife’s lover?”
Again Robledo made an ambiguous gesture. What could he reply? And again Torre Bianca, with anguish in his voice, asked,