Spaniards cowered in their houses, mindful of the 1st January, 1809, dreading an explosion of popular wrath, which they knew themselves powerless to resist. Natives, indignant at the fraud which had been practised upon them, remembered also the 1st January, 1809, and looked anxiously for the day, resolute to overcome all obstacles to the full execution of their will.
Trampling through the mud, splashing through pools of water which lay in the unpaved roadways, Marcelino galloped on, heedless that many a window was thrown hastily open as he passed, and many an anxious eye gazed after him as he rapidly disappeared from sight; heeding no more the anxious looks of men than he did the angry snarling of the curs, who leaped up upon him from many a hedgerow in the suburbs.
He reached the Miserere, and, drawing rein at the quinta gate, looked over the hedge at the windows of the house beyond. That of the sala was thrown wide open, and the mulatta servant girl stood there, staring with a bewildered look upon the clouds. Marcelino dismounted and, throwing his rein over the gate-post, walked up to the porch; the door was opened for him by Magdalen herself. She was dressed in a white wrapper with a frilled collar, and her hair was bound round her head with a fillet of blue silk. She seemed not in the least surprised to see him at that untimely hour, and her eyes spoke her welcome as she met him.
Marcelino took her hand, and she turned with him to go inside.
"I have not seen you for three days," he said; "I could not let another day pass without telling you what we have done, and to-day will be one which will mark an epoch in our history."
"I have heard something, but not all; you will tell me."
"Señorita!" exclaimed the mulatto girl, running out from the sala, "have you not seen the sky? In all my life I have seen nothing so strange."
Marcelino and Magdalen looked behind them through the open door of the porch. A bright light shone upon everything they saw, tinging everything with pink.
Then the two went out and stood in the porch, the young man and the maiden, hand in hand, together speaking not, and in their silence was there more eloquence than in many words.