Chapter II

It would be wearisome to explain how, but it came to pass that Andrés somewhat bettered his position, and seeing that he had money in hand, he said:

“If I only had a wife! But having a wife is very expensive. Men like me, before choosing a bride, should have a paradise to offer her, and a paradise in Madrid is worth as much as a man’s eye.--If I could buy a horse! A horse! There is no animal more noble or more beautiful. How he would love my dog! what merry times they would have with each other, and I with both!”

One afternoon he went to the bullfight, and before the entertainment began, he unpremeditatedly strolled out into the court-yard, where the horses who had to take part in the contest were waiting, already saddled.

I do not know whether my readers have ever had the curiosity to go and see them. For myself, without claiming to be as tender-hearted as the protagonist of this tale, I can assure you that I have often had a mind to buy them all. So great was the pity that I felt for them.

Andrés could not fail to experience a most grievous sensation on finding himself in this place. Some of the horses, with drooping heads, creatures all skin and bone, their manes rough and dirty, were standing motionless, awaiting their turn, as if they had a foreboding of the dreadful death which would put an end, within a few hours, to that miserable life of theirs; others, half blind, were sniffing about for the rack and eating, or, tearing the ground with the hoof and snorting wildly, were struggling to pull themselves loose and flee from the peril which they scented with horror. And all those animals had been young and beautiful. What aristocratic hands had patted their necks! What affectionate voices had urged on their speed! And now all was blows from one side, oaths from the other, and death at last, death in terrible agony accompanied by jests and hisses!

“If they think at all,” said Andrés, “what will these animals think at the core of their dim intelligence, when in the middle of the ring they bite their tongues and expire with a frightful spasm? Truly the ingratitude of man is sometimes inconceivable.”

He was startled out of those reflections by the rough voice of one of the _picadores_, who was swearing and cursing while he tested the legs of one of the horses, striking the butt-end of his lance against the wall. The horse did not seem entirely contemptible; apparently it was crazy or had some mortal disease.

Andrés thought of buying it. As for the cost, it ought not to cost much; but how about its keep? The _picador_ plunged the spur into its flank and started to ride toward the gate of the ring; our youth wavered for an instant and then stopped him. How he did it, I do not know; but in less than a quarter of an hour he had induced the horseman to leave the beast behind, had hunted up the contractor, made his bargain for the horse and taken it away.

I suppose it is superfluous to say that on that afternoon he did not see the bullfight.

He led off the horse in triumph; but the horse, in fact, was or appeared to be crazy.

“Use plenty of stick on him,” said one authority.

“Don’t give him much to eat,” advised a blacksmith.

The horse was still unruly. “Bah!” at last exclaimed his owner. “Let him eat what he likes and do as he chooses.” The horse was not old, and now began to fatten and grow more docile. It is true that he still had his whims, and that nobody but Andrés could mount him; but his master said: “So I shall not be teased to lend him; and as for his oddities, each of us will get accustomed to those of the other.” And they came to such a good understanding that Andrés knew when the horse felt like doing a thing and when not, and as for the horse, the voice of his master was enough to make him take a leap, stand still, or set off at a gallop, swift as a hurricane.

Of the dog we need say nothing; he came to be so friendly with his new comrade that neither could go out, even to drink, without the other. From this time on, when Andrés set off at a gallop in a cloud of dust on the Carabanchel road, with his dog frisking along beside him, dashing ahead to turn back and hunt for him, or letting him pass to scamper up and overtake him, he believed himself the happiest of men.

Time went by; our young man was rich, or almost rich.

One day, after a long gallop, he alighted, tired out, near a tree and stretched himself in its shade.

It was a spring day, bright and blue,--one of those days in which men breathe voluptuously the warm air impregnated with passion, in which the blowing of the wind comes to the ear like distant harmonies, in which the clear horizons are outlined in gold, and there float before our eyes shining motes of I know not what, motes like transparent forms that follow us, encompass us and intoxicate us with sadness and with happiness at once.

“I dearly love these two beings,” exclaimed Andrés as he reclined there stroking his dog with one hand and with the other giving to his horse a handful of grass, “dearly; but yet there is a vacancy in my heart which has never been filled; I still have it in me to lavish a love greater, holier, purer. Decidedly I need a wife.”

At that moment there passed along the road a young girl with a water-jar upon her head.

Andrés was not thirsty, but yet he begged a drink of water. The girl stopped to offer it to him, and did so with such gentle grace that our youth comprehended perfectly one of the most patriarchal episodes of the Bible.

“What is your name?” he asked when he had drunk.

“Placida.”

“And what do you do with yourself?”

“I am the daughter of a merchant who died ruined and persecuted for his political opinions. After his death, my mother and I retired to a hamlet, where we get on very badly with a pension of three _reales_ [fifteen cents a day] for all our living. My mother is ill, and everything comes on me.”

“And why haven’t you married?”

“I don’t know; in the village they say that I am good for nothing about work, that I am very delicate, very much the _señorita_.”

The girl, with a courteous good-bye, moved away.

While she was still in sight, Andrés watched her retreating form in silence; when she was lost to view, he said with the satisfaction of one who solves a problem:

“This is the woman for me.”

He mounted his horse and, followed by his dog, took his way to the village. He promptly made the acquaintance of the mother and, almost as soon, utterly lost his heart to the daughter. When at the end of a few months she was left an orphan, he married her, a man in love with his wife, which is one of the greatest blessings life affords.

To marry, and to set up housekeeping in a country mansion situated in one of the most picturesque spots of his native land, was the work of a few days.

When he saw himself in this residence, rich, with his wife, his dog and his horse, he had to rub his eyes; he thought he must be dreaming. So happy, so perfectly happy was poor Andrés.