🕯️ Las figuras de cera: novela 🕵️♂️ Misterio y crítica social con Pío Baroja
In a Spain troubled by social and political tensions, Pío Baroja presents Las figuras de cera (The Wax Figures), a novel that penetrates the darkest corners of the human soul. With his direct style and keen sense of observation, Baroja constructs a relentless portrait of characters who, like wax figures, seem empty inside, shaped by circumstances and appearances. Through a subtle but firm critique of society’s hypocrisy, this work invites us to reflect on authenticity, moral decadence, and the internal struggle to preserve dignity. Chapter 1. THE GALERAS. One June morning in 1838, several canopied galleys with four wheels, some pulled by two, others by a single, fat-legged horse, were traveling through the Roncesvalles Gorge, a long, steep slope full of zigzags, curves, and meanders that rises from Saint-Jean-Pied-de- Port to Burguete. The day was clear in France and dark and cloudy in Spain. In the valley of the Nive, the mountains, covered with trees, appeared flooded with sunshine; towards Spain, the clouds were clinging to the peaks and entering the hollows. This famous pass of Roncesvalles, which recalls Roland with his oliphant, Archbishop Turpin, and the twelve peers of France, does not have the harsh and terrible character that legend supposes. The landscape there is gentle and green, with many meadows, cultivated fields, and groups of beech and oak trees. The stone masses that the fierce Basques hurled at Charlemagne’s brilliant troops have disappeared through a trapdoor; Perhaps they never existed or were the size of almonds, and the battle of the Carolingians with the Saracens, according to the French version, or of the Carolingians with the Basques and Goths, according to the Spanish version, was no more important than a boys’ stone-throwing. It’s true that these stone-throwings are more fruitful for literature than the great modern battles with their enormous carnage and even their sausage shops, inspired by scientific and exact methods. The Monastery of Roncesvalles, like many ancient things, has more name than reality. The carts climbing the slope toward Burguete this cool June morning were, for the most part, tar-roofed galleys with all four wheels almost identical. From their appearance, they seemed more French than Spanish. The distance between carts was one hundred or two hundred meters. It could be assumed that they were carrying some cargo of weapons for the Carlists, since in that year of the war, all the ports on the Basque-Navarrese border, with the exception of Irún, were occupied by the rebels. Alongside the galleys were the carters, who sometimes had to chock the wheels with stones and then push them on their shoulders, because in some places the horses could not handle the heavy vehicles. The first galley, which led the procession, was slightly longer than the others and was pulled by two Percheron horses. It was driven by a carter and watched over by another man who marched at his side. The latter was about thirty years old and had the air of a gentleman, although not very friendly or amiable. The carter, about forty years old, handled the whip, cracking it when he didn’t have it wrapped around his neck, and shouting and cursing in the bad places where the horses stopped. The man with a gentlemanly air, thin, dark, with black sideburns, seemed somber and mysterious; the carter was a rough and vulgar type. As the first wagon approached Valcarlos, a Carlist patrol stood out on the road. “Stop, who’s there?” shouted the leader. “France,” replied the dark-skinned man with sideburns. “What people? ” “People of peace. ” “Do you have a passport?” The two men showed the documents they were carrying. The Carlists, some apparently from the Resguardo, others from a group guarding the border, all perfectly ragged, wanted to get a glimpse of what the wagon was carrying. “What’s in there?” asked the leader of the group. “Wax figures for the Pamplona fair,” replied the man with the sideburns with a marked French accent. “Man! Wax figures!” exclaimed one of the Carlists. ” Couldn’t we see them? ” “They’re not armed. ” “Don’t you give us anything to drink?” said one of the ragged rebels. “Yes, the boss,” replied the one with sideburns. “Where’s your boss? ” “He’s not our master. He’s the owner of the wax figures. ” “And where is that gentleman? ” “He’ll be passing by in a carriage shortly. ” “Along this road? ” “Yes. He said he’ll catch up with us between Valcarlos and Burguete. ” “Well, you can go on.” The cart moved off again, advancing at the pace of the Percheron horses; at noon it crossed in front of the Collegiate Church of Roncesvalles, went along the only street in Burguete, and, upon leaving this town on the way to Espinal, the man with sideburns struck up a conversation in French with the wagon driver. “The master has left us with the most difficult task: traveling on foot,” he said. “On the other hand, he, with that boy, may God confound him, is coming by carriage. ” “Don’t complain, Monsieur Frechon,” replied the carter. “The master has told you several times not to come if you don’t like this journey. ” Monsieur Frechon was silent for a moment and then exclaimed sulkily: “You’re an idiot, Claquemain. ” “Why? Let’s find out. ” “Because you let yourself be exploited. ” “Bah! I get paid for what I work for. ” “That’s what you think, you wretch. ” “Well, for now, you can be sure that I haven’t been exploited. ” “Now he’s exploiting us. The old man is plotting something that I suspect… ” “What’s he plotting? You’re always thinking that everyone is always imagining intrigues and plots, and then nothing happens. They’re all fantasies in your own head.” “You’re short-sighted, Claquemain. ” “You may be very far-sighted, Mr. Frechón; but for now you only see visions. ” “And realities. You’ll see them. ” “Bah!” and Claquemain cracked his whip in the air. “There’s something fishy going on here,” Frechón continued, “I can smell it. Does n’t it shock you that old Chipiteguy, a rich man, goes to the San Fermín fair in Pamplona, in the middle of the war, to set up a booth with a few wax figures, very shabby by the way, to earn a few cents? ” “Not me. What else could he be up to? ” “Oh! We’ll see. I’ll tell you, in confidence, that the old man has been to the house of the Spanish consul in Bayonne several times and has had long conferences with him. ” “How do you know?” “Because I’ve followed him. ” “Each to his own mania.” “The old man is on a mission that will surely be very fruitful for him. ” “What mission could he possibly be on? A political mission? ” “Perhaps. ” “If it’s political, there won’t be any money in it. ” “Your stubbornness shocks me. ” “His.” “If there is something, what will you say? ” “And if there isn’t anything? ” “As there will be… When we get to Pamplona, we’ll see. ” “Anyway. Perhaps, perhaps… you’ll be right someday,” the wagon driver murmured. Mr. Frechón knew perfectly well that there was mystery to this journey; but he didn’t want to be more explicit. If his master had a plan when he went to Pamplona, he was already hatching his own. As they continued along the road, Frechón and Claquemain stopped to eat at the side of the road, in a ravine, with a fountain and a watering trough. After some time, two other wagons approached. The carters were sitting on the ground when they heard bells and the sound of a horse’s hooves, and shortly afterward a cart appeared, occupied by an old man with a white beard and a beardless boy. “What, is there any news?” the old man asked Frechón. “None,” replied Frechón. “We’re resting. ” “The horses, have they behaved well? ” “Very well. ” “Have the Carlist customs officers at the border not caused any difficulties? ” “None. We showed them our papers and they let us pass. ” “Good; now, to Larrasoaña. There we’ll join up with a Liberal party and go to Pamplona,” said the old man. “As soon as it arrives I’ll start looking after the hut and wait for you there. So , goodbye. “Goodbye! ” “Goodbye, Señor Chipiteguy!” Frechón and Claquemain, who were finishing their meal, each emptied their bottle of wine; they got up, re-harnessed their horses, which were standing motionless beside the watering trough, and continued their journey in their cart, followed by the other galleys. “That boy has good luck,” said Claquemain suddenly, probably intending to annoy his companion. “I’m going to kick him on the best day I can get home, ” exclaimed Frechón angrily. “It’s not difficult here in Spain, because it’s in your own country,” replied Claquemain humorously. The other did not reply. The first galley continued its journey slowly. The mist covered the countryside, gray and blue, and the view reached only a short distance. Rocks and trees appeared suddenly on both sides of the road. The ringing of cattle bells and the whistles of shepherds could be heard through the fog. At dusk, in a village along the way, Claquemain and Frechón stopped to rest. The next day, upon reaching Larrasoaña, the line of galleys halted, and the drivers stopped for an hour to eat. Shortly afterward, they met up with the troops of a company of liberal volunteers and with them advanced to Pamplona. Chapter 2. THE HOUSE IN THE PLAZA DEL REDUCTO. It is evident that all towns and provincial capitals have lost their traditional character in France and other European countries. Large cities, such as Paris, London, and Berlin, are gradually standardizing provincial cities, which in turn are modifying towns and villages. The regional characteristic, the picturesque corner, so beloved in the first half of the 19th century by writers and artists, has been lost in the cities and towns and is beginning to disappear in places far from the large centers. Not only is the picturesque lost in the exterior, but also the taste for the picturesque. Almost everywhere, within a nation, people speak the same things, dress the same, and have identical entertainment and sports. The day will come when it will no longer be just nations that are unified, but continents as well. The planet, according to a misanthropic friend of the author, will be a ball of cheese, one and indivisible, with the same kind of worms, who will enjoy the same rights and the same duties. Towns and regions are rapidly forgetting their traditional character, and the Goyas, the Balzacs, and the Dickens of the future, if there are any, will have little to collect and preserve in the storehouse of old customs and habits and in the wardrobe bequeathed by their ancestors. The gods are going, good manners are going, top hats are going, morals are going; The only thing that reappears are the swallows and the unpaid bills… Bayonne was one of the French cities that retained its character until recently. Today, it no longer has it. Without walls, without gates, like a snail without its shell, losing its delicate skeleton, a banal and uninteresting town begins to emerge. Bayonne, once upon a time, with its stone belt, its narrow streets, its arches, its shops with signs and emblems, its gray and blackish houses, dominated by the two Gothic towers of the Cathedral; its fortified gates and its two rivers, which gave it a somber and damp air, was a town with a distinctly typical character. Bayonne, due to its history, its tradition, its English and Spanish influence, its mixed population, was a mixed product of the bourgeoisie, the military, commerce, stale and archaic customs, with traces of a corrupt city. There were many diverse elements united in Bayonne. Of its three districts—Grand Bayonne, Petite Bayonne, and Saint-Esprit— Grand Bayonne, the most important, was considered the center, the seat of the official world and wealthy commerce. The people of Petite Bayonne were more rural, poorer, and more Basque; those of Saint-Esprit were largely Jewish. In addition to the Gascon, Basque, and Jewish populations, there was the seafaring and river trading population of the banks of the Nive and the Adour, the fishermen, almost all Basque, and the military sector, which was then important because Bayonne was the capital of a division. During the First Spanish Civil War, Bayonne was more lively than usual; its various elements were joined by Carlist émigrés, who carried out their struggles and intrigues there. The Marquis de Lalande and Monsieur Xavier Auguet de Saint Sylvain, a second-hand bookseller in Madrid and Baron des Valles by the grace and power of Don Carlos; the Bishop of León and Aviraneta, the Prince of Lichnowsky, the Protestant Miñano, Canon Echevarría, and the English Jew Mitchell, had all found a field for their machinations there… One of the picturesque spots in Bayonne at that time, today converted into a vulgar-looking esplanade, with a bronze statue of a bishop in the middle, was the Place du Reducto. The Place du Redoubt was located at the confluence of the two Bayonne rivers, forming a spur. On one side, it had the Mayou Bridge, over the Nive, and on the other, the Saint Esprit Bridge, a pontoon bridge for crossing the Adour. On this spur, sharpened by the two rivers, stood the old bastion called the Redoubt, like the forecastle of a ship. The entrance to the bastion through the Saint Esprit Bridge was called the Porte de France. The Porte de France was a remnant of the original Gallo-Roman wall of Bayonne, rebuilt several times. Of the old Redoubt today, all that remains is the esplanade with its statue and a section of wall with a sentry box at the end of the spur, among ivy, overlooking the river. Over time, the Porte de France was demolished and the Saint Esprit Bridge was built of stone. The Redoubt and its balusters occupied the tip of the spur, between the two rivers, with their loopholes and sentry boxes that jutted out into the water. The Redoubt had outlets to the river that were often infested with rats. The soldiers and children amused themselves by chasing them with stones. Near the Redoubt’s spur, on the Adour, there were wooden pilings for mooring boats, posts eroded and green with lichen and moss. The Porte de France, attached to the redoubt, was the main entrance to the city. Coaches from Paris and Bordeaux came through it, passing first through the Saint Esprit district, which still retained something of a ghetto, dirty, closed, and mysterious, with its population of Jews, formerly expelled from Spain. The Place du Redoubt was the space between the bastion and a few houses lined up opposite. Two or three streets of Petit Bayonne led into this square , one of them being Bourg Neuf, one of the dampest and shadiest in the town. Alongside Bourg Neuf Street were other narrow streets: Puy, Chaplains de Doaline, Coutetz, Corn, Moqueron, and Perhide, some of which have since changed names, while others have disappeared. Most of the houses in Bayonne at that time were small, rather poorly built brick houses, although the tall four- and five-story 19th-century houses were already beginning to appear, giving a perfect impression of the monotonous, well-organized, and uneventful romantic life of our time. On the Place du Redoubt, at the corner of Bourg Neuf Street, lived Chipiteguy, the old man with the white beard, who was riding one June day in a hansom cab on the way to Pamplona, accompanied by a young boy. Chipiteguy’s house was an old, cracked brick house that was almost in danger of collapse. It had two rows of beams to support it on either side, which gave it the appearance of a ship being built, or of a cripple leaning on many crutches. There were several other houses in the Place du Redoubt and on the Rue de Bourg Neuf that were supported by beams. Just as in a house of cards, when one falls, it drags the others down, so there, when one house falls, the others in the neighborhood wanted to come crashing down, and, if they didn’t fall completely, they had a tendency to crack. It was a time when, in imitation of Paris, they were beginning in the cities of The demolitions of the old and unhealthy neighborhoods in the province. The houses that threatened to collapse remained for a long time like paralyzed old women, lethargic, propped up on their crutches, looking at one another, contemplating their mutual misery. Some were black and peeling, with holes between the timbers of the framework; others had their eaves drooping, like the peak of a cap, and seemed to be asleep. There were all the shades of ruin, of decay. One of those houses advanced further along the line, and the edge of its chamfered corner had a small oriel window, with round panes of glass, which gave it the appearance of a fish’s eyes; another had a belly of hypocrisy; a third had a bulge like goiter; some resembled the prow of an ancient ship; others had their windows dislocated, remaining like broken wings, groaning and crying at night on their filthy hinges. Chipiteguy’s house, old and poorly built, had a gabled roof and tall chimneys ending in zigzag tubes. It had two strong stone walls on each side, and between them, beams supporting the floors. A wooden framework crossed the facade: on the door lintel was carved a blurred shield with several half-moons and the heads of bearded men with sinister expressions. The floors were superimposed: the two above jutted out more toward the street than the one below. The house had undoubtedly moved when another adjacent one was demolished, and it bulged like the abdomen of a fifty-year-old in an absurd and ridiculous way. In the middle of the house, on the ground floor, there was a large window, converted into a display case; on the first floor, there were several windows with curtains; on the second, other openings. Then the attic, with a projecting balcony and a beam and a pulley above it, and on the ridge of the roof, a rusty weather vane with a fat, paralyzed iron dove. For two or three generations, the house at El Reducto had belonged to a Chipiteguy, dedicated to the trade of rags and scrap iron. This business had originally had a banner and the title of Las Fraguas de Vulcano; but the letters had long since faded and the name had been forgotten. The Chipiteguys, ragpickers and scrap dealers, succeeded one another like the Bourbons; in a dynasty, less known, though no less capable, perhaps being better and more honorable ragpickers than the other monarchs, without it being possible to say that one needs less spiritual qualities to be a good ragpicker than a good autocrat. Inside, Chipiteguy’s house was suffering from its disrepair; the floors were crooked and curved; the corners were slanted. Chipiteguy’s house wasn’t very bright on the outside; the rag and scrap metal business wasn’t very tidy; but inside, it was very clean and tidy. Everything seemed comfortable and well -appointed. If you entered the house, you first encountered the dark doorway; to the right, the shop, with its counter and cupboards; to the left, the staircase; and in the center, the courtyard, with two sheds, in which were piled bales of rags, rusty kettles, broken barrels, iron railings, casks, pumps, and large scales. From the shop, you went to the dark storerooms, filled with goods, stuffed into crates and sacks on the floor. Through the door on the left was the narrow, steep staircase with well-worn steps. Going up the stairs , one reached the first floor, which contained the dining room, living room, kitchen, and an office, and then the second, which consisted of a study, sewing room, and three bedrooms. The house, from the outside, had a sad and dark air, mainly due to the dampness of the two rivers, which made the facade darker each year. If from the outside everything seemed very abandoned, inside it was very clean: the floors were polished, the doors were painted, the curtains were thick and the curtains were ironed, with bows on the windows. The furniture was almost all antique, and only the bedroom Chipiteguy’s granddaughter, modern and flirtatious, was in fashion. It wasn’t the women of the house’s fault that not all the rooms were the same. Chipiteguy, the ragpicker and buyer of scrap iron, despite being rich, didn’t want to fix up the house; he felt it wasn’t worth spending money on it. He had gladly given only what was needed to decorate his granddaughter’s study, the living room, and the dining room. He often said that the house and he would last just as long, and that his granddaughter, when she grew up, would leave that filthy corner, never to return to it. Friends mocked Chipiteguy for his indifference and neglect, and told him he was like Cadet Rousselle: Cadet Rousselle, a three-bedroom house, who had neither shoes nor chevrons. The women of the house had managed, by dint of complaints, to get Chipiteguy to give them some money to fix up the living room and dining room. The drawing room, lit by a continuous balcony, was covered with green wallpaper with flowers; English-style chairs with a cloth of the same color; a piano, a tall clock with a copper dial, and two oil paintings, one of a hunt and the other a German painting of the Massacre of the Innocents, in which warriors in medieval costume were slaying children, white and round like balls. There were also several prints in the room, copies of paintings by Lebrun, inspired by the life of Alexander the Great: The Family of Darius, The Passage of the Granicus, Alexander’s Entry into Babylon, The Battle of Arbelas, and Alexander and Porus. All these prints had captions in Latin and French. The Passage of the Granicus read: _Virtus omni obice mayor._ Virtue conquers the greatest obstacle. The dining room had yellowed wallpaper, a marble fireplace, an oval table, a sideboard with copper Basque jugs, Empire chairs, and a few prints, among them a view of Bayonne, with the Avenue des Boufflers and the Porte de Mousserolles. On the sideboard, on small white tablecloths, gleamed a splendid Louis XV china tableware and gleaming glassware. The trade in scrap iron and rags meant that the lower part of the house was always in bad shape; the shipments of scrap metal and paper, the carts that stopped at the door, the ragpickers coming and going, naturally gave it a rather unsophisticated and inconspicuous air. From the windows of the upper floor and the attic, one could see , over the walls and roofs of the Redoubt, the waters of the Adour, towards the Avenues Marinières, and the masts of the ships resting on the river. On foggy days, very frequent in the Bayonne winter, the Adour resembled a pearly lake; its shores were nowhere to be seen, and the ships in the distance took on a spectral air, especially when they spread their large yellowish sails. Chapter 3. Chipiteguy and His Family. Alberto Dollfus, known in Bayonne by the nickname Chipiteguy, was an old man of nearly seventy who sold rags and scrap metal. Dollfus, of Alsatian origin, arrived in Bayonne as a soldier during the French Revolution; he settled in the city and was in Spain as an army contractor during the Napoleonic invasion. At the beginning of the century, Dollfus married María Chipiteguy, the daughter of his predecessor in the rag and scrap iron trade on the Place du Reducto. Alberto Dollfus and María Chipiteguy had two children, Juan and Graciosa. Juan, with adventurous instincts, went to America; he tried to make his fortune in different places, was unsuccessful, and finally disappeared , never to be seen again. Graciosa Dollfus married a construction contractor named Ignacio Ezponda. From this marriage was born a daughter, María Ezponda, whom they called Manón. Ignacio and Graciosa died young; he from a work-related accident; she from cholera, during the first epidemic to ravage Europe. Manón remained with her grandfather, who had great affection for his granddaughter; the old man served as a mother to the girl, caring for her, and raising her. Alberto Dollfus, known as Chipiteguy, was a man with white hair and a long, white beard with medium reddish tones, a curved nose, and eyes. Deep, with a lively expression, beneath bristly, protruding eyebrows. Chipiteguy often walked around in a grimy black calico jacket and a wool beret. When he went out on the street, he usually wore a tall, straw-like hat and slippers. With this attire, he didn’t differ much from the Jewish merchants and ragpickers of the Saint Esprit neighborhood, and some took him for a son of Israel. Old Chipiteguy paced up and down his shop, wandered through the warehouses and sheds in the courtyard, inspecting everything, giving his orders, always with his pipe in his mouth. The junk dealer in Reducto Square was methodical and meticulous, like a German bureaucrat or a Swiss watchmaker. Chipiteguy was rich; his scrap metal and rag business had been very profitable. He also had a wine cellar on Rue d’España, two houses on Rue des Basques, and money in bonds and in a current account at the Bank of France. He also owned a country house on the road to Biarritz, with a magnificent vegetable garden and fruit trees. Chipiteguy was cultured in his own way; he spoke French, German, Spanish, and Basque. He had a lively wit and a marked tendency toward satire and humor. He had always been curious about reading and learning; he bought books and subscribed to two newspapers in Paris and two in Bayonne. In a corner of the back room, he had built a small library with books that had come into his hands by chance. He had some very old volumes, incomplete collections of illustrated newspapers , piles of engravings and lithographic prints, songs and sheets in Basque, and handwritten Basque pastorals. At first, in his youth, the rag-picker had roamed the streets of Bayonne with a sack over his shoulder, accompanied by his father-in-law, shouting: “Marchand dhabits, galons!” Later, when his father-in-law died, Chipiteguy invented a picturesque cry, which he used in Bayonne and the Basque villages on the border, which went like this: ” Atera, atera trapua saltzera eta burni zarra champonian.” Sack, sack, to sell rags and scrap iron for two centavos. Later, he turned this same cry into an advertisement, posted in the window of his shop, and added the following tagline: ” Emen eroztenda modu onian diru au degulaco, alde gucietatic ongui etorri da izan oi da.” Here you buy well, because we have money from all sides. Welcome. In addition to this advertisement, Chipiteguy liked to post other mocking ones in Basque and French, offering his wares. “Atera, atera!” Chipiteguy’s song had become popular, and he had turned it into his song of bravery. If he made a good deal or received good news, the ragpicker would enthusiastically sing his “atera, atera!” When his father-in-law died and he took over his business, everyone called Dollfus Chipiteguy, as if it were indispensable that the ragpicker in Reducto Square be called that. The rag and iron seller was very Voltairian and a bit petulant; he loved being considered bold. When he heard someone say, “Old Chipiteguy is capable of anything,” he would smile with satisfaction. Chipiteguy covered a lot in his trade; he had a mania for acquiring whatever came his way; he claimed that the difficult thing was buying, not selling. Chipiteguy sometimes bought remnants of editions, piles of pamphlets, newspapers, and books. Then he would go through his acquisitions carefully. In the sheds in the courtyard, you could find everything: wheels, steering wheels, boilers, machine axles… In the warehouses, in addition to the bales of old rags, cardboard, and paper, there was a large room full of objects from the Spanish Civil War. This room was a museum of things, most of them unpleasant: uniforms stained with clotted blood, scapulars that had turned brown, medallions made of fur, trousers, frock coats, epaulettes, helmets, and tricorn hats with holes in them. for bullets; all kinds of bladed and firearms, all sorts of brass musical instruments, flutes, drums, and batons; a large quantity of stripes and various miniatures, rosaries, and medals. The street scrap dealers who entered Spain brought him these military goods, and when they took them off the carts to put them in Chipiteguy’s warehouse, swarms of neighborhood children would gather in front of the shop to see them. Chipiteguy maintained relations with Doña Paca Falcón, the owner of the antique shop, and sold her many things; but there were other things he didn’t want to sell her and kept for himself. Chipiteguy knew and interacted with the Jews of the Saint Esprit neighborhood, who, to go to and from Bayonne, had to pass in front of the old ragpicker’s shop. A large gathering would often meet at Chipiteguy’s house, and the Jews and other shopkeepers who had invested some capital in businesses in Spain would listen to the news reported by the scrap metal dealers returning from the war effort. At Chipiteguy’s shop, the accounts were kept by a bookkeeper named Matías Frechón, a reserved, hypocritical, and unfriendly man , and there were two boys to bring and carry the goods, one named Quintín and the other, Claquemain. Quintín was short, thin, shaven, and smiling, and he walked from side to side with a peculiar sway, which seemed to be in jest. Claquemain, thickset and stocky, about forty years old, with a grumpy and brutal air, with a red nose and a long, drooping black mustache, was a drunkard and untrustworthy man. Quintín took care of the store and slept in the house. Claquemain served as a porter and a wagon driver. Quintin, friendly, helpful, neat, had a good word for everyone; Claquemain, brusque, unpleasant, and dirty, spoke French in a confused manner, as if mumbling , and for whatever reason was quick to insult. Quintin and Claquemain were loyal to Chipiteguy; but their loyalty didn’t share the same characteristics. Quintin felt affection for his employer and would have offered him any service out of pleasure. Claquemain thought that, outside of Chipiteguy’s house, it wouldn’t be easy for him to find work, because he had no trade, and from this he deduced that, until something better came along , which wasn’t likely, he would work in the ragman’s shop. In the village, especially in his neighborhood, Chipiteguy didn’t enjoy a very good reputation. Some old people remembered that Chipiteguy belonged to the Bayonne Committee of Public Safety and that he was a friend of the Convention members Pinet, Cavaignac, Monestier, and Dartigoeyte. It was also known that he had provided information to Citizen Beaulac for his memoirs on the war between France and Spain during the First Revolution, and his loyalty to the old Bayonne republican, Basterreche, was recalled. Basterreche, who in a biography published when he was a deputy was described as having dark skin, a short waist, curly hair, the eyes of a satyr, and the gait of a Basque, was a very good friend to his friends and had supported Chipiteguy in difficult times. The two old men often held long conferences. It was believed that the ragpicker was still a Jacobin. It was known that he had warmly defended Danton and Anacharsis Clootz more than once. Some strange rumors circulated about him; it was whispered that he had smuggled contraband, and even counterfeited currency; it was added that he had distributed Carbonari leaflets and papers and that he belonged to a secret republican society called The Seasons, which included such dangerous men as Blanqui and Barbés. Despite his republicanism and Voltairianism, Chipiteguy celebrated the two patron saints of scrap metal collectors, Saint Roch and Saint Sebastian, with grand festivities in his house; but this was because he thought any pretext would be good enough for a feast. Many people, especially the legitimists, saw Chipiteguy as a monster; they saw him brandishing a pike with a severed head on its end, or escorting people with a saber in his hand and without a shirt. A cart for condemned men. Chipiteguy lived in the house on Reducto Square with his granddaughter Manón, his wife’s niece, named María; Andre Mari, “Señora María” in Basque, who was about fifty years old, and two maids: an old one, Tomascha, and a young one, the cook, Baschili. Manón, who at fourteen was lively and daring, promised to be very pretty. Manón was the enthusiasm of old Chipiteguy and the entire house. Chipiteguy needed to be constantly at the side of his granddaughter, whom he called his _perchanta_, a word that in Basque means something like sharp, clever, lively, and which the old man used fondly when referring to his granddaughter. He also frequently called her a witch. “You are descended from witches,” Chipiteguy had once said to his granddaughter. “And you aren’t, Grandpa? ” “I’m not.” Your father’s second surname, Arguibel, was that of a witch. These Arguibels were relatives of the famous abbot of Saint Cyran. “Was this abbot a witch? ” “No; this one was a Jansenist, which is something even more stupid. At the time of the witch trials that took place in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, an old abbot, Arguibel, was burned in Ascain, accused of witchcraft. He was, no doubt, one of those who went to the Sabbaths of Zugarramurdi and to the Hermitage of the Holy Spirit, on Mount Larrun, on horseback, with the cerasera on their backs. ” “Is that how they went? ” “Yes. ” “But the ceraserae weren’t as old as they are now, Grandfather? ” “No; they were young, and I imagine there were some pretty ones. Around that time they also burned a certain Bocal, the young vicar of Ciburu, and Juan de Miguelena, from Ascain, both for witchcraft.” Many of our Basques, accused of being witches, were burned at the stake by two French magistrates, both somewhat suspected of witchcraft; one from Lancre, the other from Espagnet, who had a house full of sculptures and magical symbols on the Rue des Bauléres in Bordeaux. The good Chipiteguy felt great affection for his granddaughter and did whatever he pleased with her, despite the protests of Andre Mari and the old maid, Tomascha, who asserted that allowing Manon to indulge in all her fancies would make him unbearable. Manon led an independent life. She wandered up and down the warehouse and her grandfather’s shop; she talked to the buyers and sellers, despite the opposition of Andre Mari and Tomascha. The old man expressed his desire that his granddaughter not become a silly and fussy young lady and allowed her to enter the shop and participate in the sales and purchases. But at the same time, when school hours arrived, he would send her to her room to study. The girl had teachers who came every day to give her lessons. Manon’s room was the most elegant in the house. It was covered in blue wallpaper, had lacquer furniture, elegant chairs and armchairs, an Empire bed with draperies, a very beautiful dressing table, several English prints, and a new piano. Manon had no great desire to study; she loved to read and, sometimes , to play the piano; but this was only an intermittent hobby. In her room, there was always a birdcage and two or three cats on the cushions, with which the girl of the house played. Manon, as the sole heir, had a great future ahead of her. “All this,” said good old Chipiteguy, showing the piles of scrap metal and the dirty bundles of rags and paper, “will one day be converted into beautiful clothes and a magnificent car for this rascal.” Manon adored her grandfather, and whenever he held the girl close to him, with her rosy cheeks and golden hair, he would murmur proudly: “There’s no one like old Chipiteguy’s granddaughter. This perchanta is worth a world. ” If Andre Mari or Tomascha were around when they heard this phrase, they would grumble sulkily, because, in their opinion, the girl was becoming foolish and vain. Manon was a little arrogant, of variable temper, generally cheerful, but sometimes taciturn. When she spoke to strangers, she did so in an imperious and rushed manner, especially if they contradicted her. On the other hand, if they agreed with her, she felt intimidated and confused, without knowing why. Manón was a first cousin of a girl, Rosa Lissagaray, whose family owned a bazaar in the arches of Puerto Nuevo Street, called The Earthly Paradise. The two girls, who were the same age, presented a vivid contrast : Rosa, dark-haired, with a long, straight, expressionless face, a well-defined nose, thick lips, pale complexion, and a little nearsighted; Manón, with a round face, bright blue eyes, an expression of feline liveliness and a slightly mad audacity, blond hair in short, tousled curls that accentuated the animation of her face. Rosa, very shy, often blushed, and one of her most frequent behaviors was to stand with her hands crossed in admiration. Manon’s face displayed daring and absurd impulses, a nervousness in her eyes and mouth, a trembling at the corners of her lips, and, at times, a certain silent laughter, which gave her a restless and malicious appearance. When she was happy, she usually had a determined and triumphant air. The _perchanta_, as Manon’s grandfather called her, was on her way to becoming a beauty. Rosita, more modest, despite her correct features, failed to attract anyone’s attention. Manon had the comical petulance of a naughty boy; she repeated phrases and epithets she didn’t fully understand, giving them, therefore, an even crazier and more grotesque air. Manon made fun of everything. She liked to tease her cousin, telling her that she would like to be a dancer, a comedian, or an adventurer. She almost always had four or five young men around her who hung around the street and wrote her love letters, which she laughed at. In the store, he would argue with the buyers or the scrap dealers who came to sell something, and for one reason or another, he would be heard swearing and cursing in French, Spanish, and Basque, imitating his grandfather: “Sacre nom! Je men fous! What a f… man! Go to hell ! Arrayúa! ” These atrocities greatly amused old Chipiteguy and made Andre Mari and Tomascha clutch their heads, believing that the girl would end badly with this kind of upbringing. Manón scandalized his cousin with his rebellious ideas. When Rosita objected to his fantasies, with his common sense, Manón would affectionately reply: “You’re a silly, good girl.” Sometimes, Manón, pretending to be fed up with everything, would say: “I don’t want to hear about boyfriends or love anymore. I prefer a good meal, a cup of coffee, a glass of cognac, and then a good cigar.” Manón had a springy, graceful gait; she possessed charm in all her attitudes and movements and great confidence, more or less feigned, in her decisions. The old Jew Manasses León, a friend of Chipiteguy, called the two cousins Martha and Maria, and also Democritus and Heraclitus. Manasses was very enthusiastic about Manón; but he preferred Rosa, because, according to his Jewish criteria, women shouldn’t have personality, but rather be obedient and submissive. Manasses knew a Spanish proverb, which he often repeated: “Mouth on knee and to the corner with the pillow.” Chipiteguy, who was half German, believed the opposite and was pleased to think that his _perchanta_ would be able to handle herself in any circumstance she found herself in. A nephew of Chipiteguy, Marcelo, joked that Rosa was like custard, and Manón like those dishes full of strong spices. Aunt Maria and the maids, although they admired Manon, frequently lectured her; but she paid no attention to their sermons. The _perchanta_ of the Reducto house knew very well that her grandfather always came to her defense and defended her ardently. There was a close alliance between the grandfather and his granddaughter. Manon was outraged when they called her grandfather a miser, a cynic, and an impious man. For Chipiteguy, dignities did not exist. His rag-picker’s philosophy made him believe that a chalice was no different from a cup except for its pearls; that a banner had the value of cloth and gold. gold, and that a duchess was no different from a laundress except in what was good or bad in her. Chipiteguy mocked the novelist Balzac, who was beginning to be much talked about at this time, for the writer’s love for the aristocracy. One of the reasons for Chipiteguy’s discredit was his Voltaireanism. Chipiteguy believed that religion was always the cloak of hypocrites and scoundrels to cover their miseries and their scoundrelism. A good Catholic was, to him, something dirty, like a morally infected man, an untrustworthy man; capable of anything. He had once said, recommending an acquaintance in Strasbourg, a Bayonne abbot: You can trust him, because, although a priest, he is a good person. “A Catholic is one of the most debased products of the human species ,” the ragman assured him. “Tell a Catholic: such and such a citizen steals from his destiny, and he will justify him.” He is a family man, he has children… The other abandons his father, he will also legitimize him; the third sells his daughter, the same; the Catholic legitimizes everything. But there will be a party and a dance; then the Catholic will frown. “That’s immoral, it’s scandalous, it’s an arousal of lust,” he will say. “Lust is a bad thing; we ought to suppress prostitution,” you will think. “No, not that; it’s a necessary evil…” he will affirm hypocritically. “Bad race, ugly race, low, debased, and bastard race, that Catholic race!” He attributed many of the violent opinions professed by Chipiteguy to a friend of his, the poet Julius Petrus Guzenhausen of Aschaffenburg; but some thought that this poet Julius Petrus was an invention of his own and had never existed. Clericalism always carries with it the Voltairean tendency; That’s why in Latin countries the impious are more impious than in Protestant countries. When Andre Mari, Tomascha, and the cook would begin to pray the rosary aloud in the kitchen after dinner, Chipiteguy would often exclaim: “Crazy old women! Don’t come here with that nonsense. I don’t want you to bring us any misfortune with so much praying. Go to the cathedral. There you have plenty of room to repeat your nonsense, without disturbing anyone, for as long as you like. Even so, don’t think you’re not doing any harm; you are, because you come here and bring a swarm of fleas.” His niece and the maid would retort furiously and threaten him with hell, which made him laugh out loud and say even more irreverent things. Another time, when they were discussing the priests’ sermons, which recommended that women not wear low-cut tops, Chipiteguy , playing the fool, said to his household: “What you could do is go to the bishop, naked, and there he would, with that little soap the tailors use, mark exactly how much you could show on your body.” These scandalous phrases outraged those who heard them. Andre Mari, a childless widow, a thin, sour woman with a sharp , pale face, had a figure that seemed only visible in profile. She was always poking around with a cat in her skirt. The maid, Tomascha, resembled Andre Mari in character, though not in type; she had a nun-like appearance, a round, puffy face , a bit like someone with albuminuria; her complexion was very pale, her gaze expressionless, and her air was indigestible. She quarreled constantly with the young girl. Tomascha undoubtedly felt affection for Chipiteguy and the house; but at times she seemed to revel in misfortunes. Tomascha was, above all, a fateful woman and delivered bad news with relish, something that infuriated Chipiteguy. Several times the scrap metal dealer told Andre Mari to go back to her village and that he would continue paying her wages; but Tomascha, upon learning this, shed a flood of tears. Baschili, the cook, was very amorous and always had some boyfriend or lover, with whom she would go for walks on Sundays. It was said that she had had a boy in the village, and Tomascha had told Andre Mari, and Andre Mari had told Chipiteguy. “Even if I had a regiment, I wouldn’t send her away,” replied the ragman of the Redoubt. “I don’t demand a vow of chastity from her, but that she cook well. ” The housemaid at Chipiteguy’s house, who swept and scrubbed the warehouses and the shop, was a Gascon, with a bunion, robust, and talkative. She was known by her surname, La Mazou. La Mazou was turbulent and tormented by the desire for action; when there was extraordinary work to be done, she reveled in it. La Mazou, sturdy and square, had as much strength as a man. “This one was born to have a dozen children,” said Chipiteguy; ” but since she’s as clever as a mule and as rough as a thistle, she’s remained single. ” “Bah! If only she had wanted to!” she retorted. La Mazou sometimes took a drink when undertaking some hard work, in the company of Quentin or Claquemain. Although she was nearly fifty, Quentin had courted her; but Mazou despised the young man because he was small and puny. Chipiteguy mocked the people in his house, except for Manon. He also made a great deal of fun of the Jews who came to his shop; he had repeatedly attended services at the Synagogue and satirized the songs and laments of the Children of Israel. He reminded them of the time before the Revolution, which he had come to know, when the Jews of Saint Esprit, who were also called the Portuguese and the New Christians, were not allowed to live in the center of Bayonne. He told them that it was said at that time that the Jews of the Saint Esprit neighborhood, when they took Christian wet nurses, would empty their breasts on Communion days , so that there would be no trace of the divine body of Jesus Christ in their bodies. He spoke to them, as if it were true, about how they celebrated Passover with the blood of Christians and about ritual murders. To annoy the Jews, he pretended to believe that they made food with the blood of Christian children, and he recalled that a Jew, Rafael Levi, had been burned at the stake in Metz, accused of having killed a three-year-old boy with this culinary object. “In my country,” he used to say, “they are greatly hated.” And he used to tell this anecdote: When Marshal de la Ferté entered Metz, the Jews of the city went to greet him. When they told him that there was a commission of Israelites in the antechamber, he shouted: “I don’t want to see those scoundrels who crucified Our Lord; don’t let them in.” The Jews were told that the marshal could not receive them. They replied that they were very sorry, because they were going to bring him a gift of four thousand pistols. The marshal was warned about what they were up to, and the marshal immediately said: “Send them in at once. Poor people! They are accused without reason. They did not know Christ when they crucified him.” The ragpicker, recounting this, laughed heartily. Chipiteguy, he said, had done his best to adorn the heads of some of his Jewish friends with horns; but this, as is known and as his friend Julius Petrus Guzenhausen of Aschaffenburg often repeated, is nothing more than a disease of the imagination, and no married man could be sure of avoiding it. In Chipiteguy’s youth, the Saint Esprit neighborhood retained something of a ghetto; the houses were usually closed at dusk, the men walked around with swashbucklers, pale, black-eyed women leaned out of the windows, and a half-Spanish, half- Hebrew slang could be heard. Chipiteguy recounted his youthful love affairs with the Jewish girls of the neighborhood, which was very shocking. The Israelites responded to the old ragpicker’s jokes with violent talk and behavior, and recounted in a florid style the persecutions suffered by their race. Chipiteguy ‘s constant theme was greed. The Jews blamed him for the same defect. The most common ones in Chipiteguy’s house were Manasés León, the pawnbroker; Haim Gómez, from the haberdashery guild; and Isaac Castro, the fruit vendor. By dint of reproaching Chipiteguy and his friends for their stinginess and Their sordidness had led them to consider this vice an amusing and picturesque condition. Coming and going from Saint-Esprit to Bayonne, across the pontoon bridge, a large Jewish sanhedrin would form around Chipiteguy’s shop, resembling a flock of crows. Amidst the nasal, high-pitched voices of the Jews and their puppet-like actions and gestures, Chipiteguy’s peals of laughter resounded. He always spoke contemptuously of the Bible, and the Jews fervently defended their holy book; but more than religious matters, they were passionate about money and the reproach they leveled at one another for avarice. All the old and well-known anecdotes about misers and usurers were attributed to the opposing party. The miser, who held his breath when being measured for a suit, so as to appear less fat and force the tailor to use less cloth; The one who had been reducing the horse’s ration of straw and barley, and when it died of hunger, said: “What a pity! Now that it’s getting used to it… ” Another batch of traits, worthy of Harpagon, Shylock, or Licenciado Cabra, were attributed to one another. In reality, all those Jews, Nathan, David, or Solomon, rag-and-bone men and moneylenders of the old school, with their threadbare overcoats and greasy hats, with their usurious practices and their little black shops, had to consider themselves defeated by usurers of a new style, more elegant and dapper, who rode around in carriages or on horseback, dressed like dandies, and were becoming millionaires. Chipiteguy and his Jewish friends weren’t so much interested in large mortgages as in petty theft. Among these, great merit was deceiving a companion, getting someone to invite him, or getting something for nothing. They all boasted of the tricks they played to deceive one another. A somewhat learned merchant had called Chipiteguy’s house the School of Misers. When his Jewish friends weren’t around, Chipiteguy wasn’t stingy, and whatever his granddaughter asked for he granted immediately. What he didn’t want to spend money on was his clothes. “An elegant ragpicker would be ridiculous,” he would say. When Chipiteguy took off his grimy harem, he was seen dressed in a faded jacket, so it was hard to guess what color it was at first; darned and patched trousers, and an old nankin waistcoat. Chipiteguy didn’t want to dress up; he liked to appear just as he had always been. Despite his stinginess toward himself, he was splendid in other ways. At the table, he spent a lot. The glassware was always fine and new. Chipiteguy couldn’t stand a stain on the tablecloth; so it had to be renewed for every meal. At Chipiteguy’s house, they ate well and drank Bordeaux and Burgundy wines freely. The old man also liked liqueurs, and after eating, he enjoyed a few glasses of old cognac. With this treatment, his nose and cheeks had acquired, in some places, shades of crimson, which were turning into violet. Under this regime, Chipiteguy was prone to gout and sometimes suffered from stones. During these times, he would spend sad days, dejected and thoughtful; but when he recovered, he would return to his joviality. He said that he should have the same epitaph that Desaugiers, a songwriter who suffered from stone fever, wrote for himself: Ci git helas, under this stone, a bon vivant mort de la pierre passant, that you are Paul or Pierre, not going to let him pass the stone. Despite his mockery, Chipiteguy had a touch of mysticism. There was something of the German’s contemplative spirit in him, combined with the Frenchman’s light impiety ; but perhaps the vague, mystical tendency was his deepest core. He spent many hours gazing at the river water, thinking vaguely about the forces of Nature. He also lost himself in smoking his pipe, watching the wisps of smoke in the air, or contemplating the flames of the fire. “Are you sleeping, Grandfather?” his granddaughter would ask him. “No; I’m thinking. ” “Thinking about what?” Manon would ask her. Undoubtedly, the old man thought vaguely about many things, too. vague, because he had a tendency toward meditation. Sometimes he thought of nothing and lay motionless, his gaze lost, as if lethargic. Chapter 4. THE TAVERN OF OCHANDABARATZ. The Rue des Vasques, in Bayonne, a narrow, damp, and black street, parallel to the Nive and the Rue de l’España, was and is one of the darkest in the town. It always smelled of damp and fish, which made the atmosphere not very pleasant to breathe. There were then warehouses for salted fish in this street and itinerant fishmongers set up shop on the stream. At the time of the First Spanish Civil War, the shops in the Rue des Vascos were few: a few stores of fish, barrels, bottles and old rags, two inns, the Fonda de Iturri and the Guetaldia, where Basque peasants from nearby villages and Carlists with little money took refuge; Several taverns, rag shops, and some china shops displayed jugs, clay money boxes, and colorful paper kites in their windows. On the street, the most well-kept and clean house was Iturri’s Inn, which had a haberdashery shop on the ground floor, where brightly colored silk scarves were displayed. Iturri’s Inn enjoyed a reputation as a respectable place where people ate well. Among the two or three taverns on Basque Street, the most frequented, and almost always full, were the Spanish Tavern and Ochandabaratz’s Tavern. The latter was also called the Red Rooster Tavern because its sign depicted a rooster, painted red, crowing on a ball. Ochandabaratz’s Tavern, dark and sinister, was located in a large basement, and in winter it was always lit with oil lamps, otherwise, in the depths, one couldn’t see the sunlight. The tavern had no doorway, and only the walls of the house on the ground floor were covered in brownish paint , which peeled off the stones and left them as if covered in scale. One entered through the hall, and on the left was the tavern, which was reached by a few steps. In this basement, there was a small, leaded-glass window overlooking the street and a window facing a courtyard; but neither the window nor the window provided enough light to clearly see inside. The tavern was large and spacious, with an enormous zinc-covered counter stocked with flasks, bottles of liquor, and black demijohns. The walls had a wooden baseboard and several tables and benches. The tavern continued through a corridor, illuminated by the window overlooking the courtyard. In this corridor, there were two large rows of barrels. Ochandabaratz, the tavern owner, was a man of about fifty, heavyset, a little asthmatic, very sententious, with a reserved air. He always wore a white shirt with a large collar, a black blouse, and a large beret. His wife was handsome and showy; his two daughters were very pretty; the servant Shanchin was as lively as a monkey; and the girl Leonie was handsome, blond, and luscious. The tavern was always busy, day and night; apparently, Ochandabaratz’s wares had a reputation for being exquisite, and the tavern’s wine and spirits could compete with those of the best hotels in Bayonne. One rainy winter afternoon, a group of rather strange fellows were in Ochandabaratz’s tavern, forming a lively group. They were a coachman from a funeral home named Tapin; Benedict, the cathedral bell ringer; a hunchbacked gravedigger known as Patrich; the pilot Ibarneche, Bidagorry, the coalman from the Rue du Pont Traversant, who had a wooden leg; the dancing master Cuyala, from the Rue du Vauverte, and three scrap dealers; Michu from the Old Oak on the Rue du Bourg Neuf; Larroque from the French Arms, from the Quai de la Galuperie, and Portefaix, from the Beautiful Frigate on the Rue des Pontriques. The most notable of these fellows were Patrich, for his hump, and Bidagorry, for his wooden leg; but the others also had character. Ibarneche, the pilot, was tall, red-faced, with a broad face, and glasses, a pipe in his mouth; Cuyala, the dance master, elegant, thin, long-haired, pale, with a blue frock coat with gold buttons, a red tie, and shorts, showed off his calves; Michú wore a top hat and a floor-length overcoat, and had a pockmarked face like a parrot; Portefaix had bulging, faded eyes, like two eggs, and a frog-like face, somewhere between smiling and sad; and Larroque, who wore a ragged coat and a cap, had a face full of scars, one eye cloudy, the other malicious, gray-green, reddish, full of intelligence, mischief, and shamelessness. These three scrap metal dealers, Michú, Larroque, and Portefaix, used to go to Spain frequently to buy scrap metal, grenades, and weapons, and they traded and bartered with Chipiteguy. The hunchbacked gravedigger, Patrich, would celebrate, he said, to everyone who approached him, two momentous events in his life: one, that he had won the lottery; the other, that his wife had died in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. For this occasion, Patrich would indulge in the strangest antics, singing and dancing joyfully. Patrich showed great joy at his wife’s death, yet some claimed to have seen him crying a few days earlier for the same reason. With a clown like him, anything was possible. While the group was celebrating, old Chipiteguy and the Jew Moisés Panighettus, owner of a rag shop near the Porte de France , appeared in the tavern . Patrich, the hunchback, hurried to greet Chipiteguy and Panighettus; he told them the reason for his celebration and invited them to sit down. Chipiteguy said he had to go to one of his houses to collect the rent. “Sit down, sit down; there’s no hurry,” cried the hunchback. “What, have you come to collect the bill?” Ochandabaratz asked Chipiteguy. “Yes. ” “Are those Spaniards paying yet? ” “There are only one or two,” replied Chipiteguy. “They will pay,” exclaimed Patrich, the hunchback. “Everyone pays last; some with their coins, others with their bodies. Ha! Ha! Ha! There’s no need to rush anyone. Let’s sing again.” They all sang in chorus, in Basque, the song collected by Dr. Larralde, from Saint-Jean-de-Luz: Errico festac biaramumiam The day after the festival, the couplet that begins by painting the scene of four women, three spinsters and a widow, playing truque on a festival day in the shade of a Basque village, all four a little drunk. They sang it unevenly, because each one went their own way and some didn’t know Basque. Afterward, the pilot Ibarneche sang, in a low voice, some romantic sea songs: Ichasua laño dago Bayonaco alderaño. Nic zu zaitut maitiago choriyac beren umiac baño. The sea is covered with fog toward Bayonne. I love you more than a bird loves its chicks. Santa Catalin aurrera bischigutan azi dera. Ondo irteten baguero laster neria izango cera. Before Santa Catalina we have started fishing for sea bream. If we do well, you will soon be mine. Gure oroliz aita dago laño bian gaberaño. Nic zu zaitut maitiago arraichuac ura baño. Our memory is upright even under the fog. I love you more than minnows love water. Ichasua urac aundi, es tu ondoric agueri. Pasaco nisaqueni andic maitea icuzteagatic. In the sea of big waves, one can’t see well. I would always cross the sea to see my beloved. Ibarneche’s specialty, besides his romantic songs, was eating copiously. The pilot had made many bets and had won. He had once eaten a lamb with most of the bones. For him, swallowing two chickens, leaving only the beak, was a game. He couldn’t do it with the beak; before the beak, he declared himself defeated. He had also eaten a hake and four dozen eggs in one meal. He was more moderate when it came to drinking; he never went beyond forty glasses of cider in an afternoon, nor twenty of wine. While Ibarneche was singing, Bidagorry, the coalman, followed the rhythm of the song, rolling his eyes and making his face languid and sad. This rapid accommodation was Bidagorry’s specialty. Patrich, the gravedigger, not a fan of melancholy things—melancholy is not for gravediggers, he said—began to sing and dance some San Sebastián soldiers’ songs with a fandango air. The funny thing, for those listening, was that Patrich didn’t know Basque and sometimes said one thing for another. The song went like this: Oh, Madalén, Madalén; Madalén gajoa! Bigarren batalloyan da uucazu majoa. Chiquichua da baña, mutico polita, Cazadorietaco corporal first class. Oh, Magdalena, Magdalena; poor Magdalena! You have your friend in the Second Battalion. He’s a small, but handsome boy, and a first corporal in the Chasseurs. Bidagorry emphasized the intention of the song, giving his features a shameless and cheerful air. The song, already grotesque, sung and danced by Patrich, was even more so. Patrich, old, lame, small, and hunchbacked, with a bold face, a long white beard, round, black, and shining, owl-like eyes, a flat nose, a broad, prominent forehead, and a bald head down to the nape of his neck, had a Socratic air. Patrich wore a threadbare black MacFarland hat, a dirty and unkempt top hat. His boldness and impertinence were somewhat annoying. He was also an unpleasant buffoon, because he easily became upset or assumed a sentimental, drunken, or unpleasant attitude in the middle of a joke . After the verses to Magdalena came couplets addressed to certain gallants, who would have been famous in their time among the maids and seamstresses of San Sebastián: Bata, García; eta beztea, Domingo; onezquero gauz onic ez ditec eguingo. Euscaldunac snub, oyequin friend. Berac deitzen ciyoten: Come with me. One, García; the other, Domingo; until now, surely, they haven’t done anything good. To the Basques, snubs, and to those others, friends. They themselves would say to them: Come with me. It must be assumed that these ladies who said to the first corporals and sergeants, “Come with me,” were not from high society, nor would they appear in the Gotha Almanach, although some demagogues assume, perhaps with little respect, and above all with little personal information, that it is mainly the pompous ladies, those from the Gotha Almanach, who have a tendency to say to the first corporals and sergeants, “Come with me.” This question is, without a doubt, difficult to resolve experimentally, and we leave it for the study of specialists. Patrich grew tired of his dancing and singing and sat down to drink a large glass of wine. Meanwhile, one of the scrap metal dealers, who frequently visited Spain, chanted this hybrid Basque-Castilian masterpiece, also from San Sebastián: A soldier tells her: “Nere maite ederra, only your face ematen dit guerra.” And she answers immediately: Ez bildurric izan izan bear badezu my brave captain. Damacho ederra, brave young man, she a seamstress, he a second lieutenant, and she has told him many times that he needs two epaulettes. A soldier tells her: Beautiful beloved, your face alone gives me the war. And she answers immediately: Do not be afraid if you have to be my brave captain. Beautiful young lady, brave young man, she a seamstress, he a second lieutenant, and she has told him many times that he needs two epaulettes. The author understands that it is a bit abusive to include so many insignificant songs. They mean something to him, although to the majority of his readers, of course, they mean nothing. The author is an individualist and He puts them on. One of the half-blind ragpickers took out a tin flute and began to monotonously play the song of Cadet Rouselle. After this, Patrich threw up his feet, swayed like a dancer, snored shamelessly, put his head on the ground, turned around, and remained seated. A little later, Patrich appeared, riding on stilts and walking into the tavern, almost touching the ceiling. The hunchbacked dwarf felt himself high and powerful. Old Chipiteguy, who had been drinking and laughing the whole time , made an appointment with Moisés Panighettus for the next day and got up to leave Ochandabaratz’s tavern. “Goodbye, gentlemen!” he said. “Hey, uncle!” Patrich shouted to him. “Don’t go; you have to sing your song.” The people in the tavern didn’t pay much attention, and Patrich became uncomfortable. Patrich was a violent and imperious man; he forced certain songs to be sung and vetoed others he didn’t like. It seemed as though he had some special right to command all matters musical and philharmonic in Ochandabaratz’s house. Patrich took off his stilts and berated everyone, imposing silence with hisses and slaps. When he succeeded, he began Chipiteguy’s bravura song, and they sang it in chorus, shouting: Atera, atera, trapua saltzera eta burni zarra chaponian. Chipiteguy, laughing, greeted everyone and went out into the street. “Goodbye, Uncle!” Patrich said again. Patrich often joked by calling Chipiteguy “Uncle.” The reason for this supposed kinship was as follows. Many years ago, in the early days of the Empire, two very pretty sisters, both married, lived on Pontriques Street. Both, with strange unanimity, cheated on their husbands. One of them was said to be involved with Chipiteguy, and the other, to be the lover of a certain Lafón, an iron dealer. Lafón’s husband, whom they called Puteche, was a cynic who lived off his wife’s income. “A good mouthpiece,” his friends would tell him. “Lafón’s,” he would reply, smiling. “A beautiful watch chain,” the other would say. “Lafón’s,” he would reply. “What a nice hat you’re wearing! ” “Lafón’s.” The two sisters, both pretty and cheerful, had two boys at the time: Máximo Castegnaux, who claimed to be Chipiteguy, and Patricio Larroque Patrich, who claimed to be Lafón. Given Puteche’s refrain, naturally, this joke became easy. A friend had said to him, pointing to Puteche’s wife’s child: “What a handsome boy!” And he had replied: “Lafon’s.” The anecdote was false, because neither the boy was handsome nor had Puteche said these words. It is unknown why, whether Lafon gave little money to his mistress, or if she was trying to economize; the fact was that Puteche began to notice that the food in his house was dwindling to incredible extremes. Despite his philosophical calm, one day Puteche jumped out, and, indignantly grabbing a plate of chard and throwing it out the window, said to his wife: “Have no shame. Is this an average meal for a complacent husband?” Since the irregularity of the two sisters’ lives was known to all the neighborhood gossips, the boys Máximo and Patricio were not unaware; and when the first two quarreled, one would say to the other: “Chipiteguy!” “Chipiteguy!” and the other would answer: “Lafon! Lafon!” The fathers, at least the legal fathers, were very calm when they heard it; not so the mothers; sometimes, the latter would fly into a furious rage when they heard “Chipiteguy! Chipiteguy! Lafon! Lafon!” and would start kicking the boys. When Lafon died, Puteche would say: “My wife has been Lafon’s mistress for twenty years, and that swine hasn’t left her anything in his will.” Everyone considered Puteche a cynic and a scoundrel. Undoubtedly, the man laughed at the idea of being a husband. deceived and that what for others is a cause of sadness and shame, for him was a cause of trouble. However, some resentment must have remained in him, because it is said that, when he died, his wife approached the head of the bed and he said to her: “Get out of here…” Max Castegnaux and Patricio Larroque, the two cousins who as children reproached each other for his alleged paternity, became friends. Max Castegnaux was a great rascal. One of his jokes consisted of saying to Chipiteguy, when he passed by him: “Goodbye, Father!” After several crazy antics, Max enlisted in the army and was in Algeria, where he became a sergeant. Patrich, the hunchback, became a gravedigger and considered Chipiteguy part of the family and always called him uncle. When he left Ochandabaratz’s tavern, Patrich called a street violinist and had him play; but he soon bored those gathered. “Let’s see, Patrich,” said Ibarneche, “tell us some epitaphs from the cemetery. ” “No, not now,” replied the gravedigger. “Yes, yes,” everyone shouted. “Well, here’s one. Authentic: that of the child Pedro Verrue: Here lies the child Pedro Verrue, three years and two months old. He was self-sacrificing, discreet, and just. His life was a long chain of suffering, which he endured with fortitude and Christian resignation. ” Everyone laughed. “Another, another!” they said. “The epitaph of Routier’s widow, whom we all knew for her sour disposition; also authentic: Here lies Marie Françoise Bachelin, widow of Routier, dead at the young age of 79. She was an angel. Her children, sons-in-law, and grandchildren place this wreath on her grave for her virginal purity. ” “Another, another!” “Here lies Jean-Baptiste Colardeau, dead at seven and a half years of scarlet fever. He was a good son, a good citizen, and a lover of his country. Pray for him. ” Laughter continued from the audience. “More, more! ” “No, that’s enough for today,” said Patrich with his rotund air. “One to finish, also authentic: Here lies Louis Bernard Chevrau, manufacturer of soap and Alpine vulnerary. He was a model family man, a sergeant in the National Guard, and a good citizen. Suffering humanity owes him the best Swiss vulnerary, which his widow is still manufacturing in Bayonne, at 4 Rue du Vauvert.” They laughed at this last epitaph, and Patrich declined to continue. Chapter 5. THE TENANTS OF CHIPITEGUY. The house of Chipiteguy, on Rue des Basques, was tall, black, with windows that opened in the dark wall. It was inhabited by many tenants, mostly poor people, shop and office employees, retirees, and workers. Downstairs there was a bottle store and a coal store. The staircase of the house, gloomy and somber, led to a small, black courtyard; the damp entrance, with a zinc-covered booth, was always in darkness. The house had five floors, and on each floor were three doors; beside each one hung the bell chain from a metal ring, and these rings, like the stair banister, were lubricated with a cold, sticky grease. From time to time, on the left-hand staircase, there were windows overlooking the courtyard, through which one could see the backs of other houses, gloomy and leprous. Up and down those stairs went old women with a suspicious air , resembling piles of dirty laundry, wearing casques, caps, and withered hats. with suits that smelled of threadbare rags and wet umbrellas; and old men with antique top hats and frock coats from another era that reached down to their calves. Upon entering his house, Chipiteguy first went to the bottle cellar on the ground floor. This cellar was looked after by a wrinkled old woman who occasionally interrupted her task of making a living so she could eat bread and cheese. The old woman, seeing Chipiteguy, got up and took the rent money out of a cupboard; then she began to tell, half in French, half in Basque, a boring story from her youth, laughing from time to time. when to show his toothless gums. Chipiteguy went from the bottle warehouse to the coal warehouse; then he went upstairs to the rooms. Here lived a retired man with his wife, who passed the time by strolling the streets or the corridor of his house. The retired man paid his rent immediately. Another tenant was a Spaniard, always wrapped in his cloak, with a bandage covering his nose and mouth. This Spaniard pretended to be a war invalid, a false claim, since his sores were caused by lupus that was eating away at his face. Despite this, the man seemed happy, ate and smoked, and didn’t worry about his illness, which Chipiteguy found very strange. This man stood guard at the doors of the houses of well-to-do Carlists and didn’t beg; he took what was given to him. The pseudo-invalid paid his rent. Another tenant was an old former haberdasher. This rich old woman looked like a pile of rags. She wore very large, tattered boots, carried a cane in her hand, and wore a red scarf on her head. When she met Chipiteguy, she lamented her lack of resources. Apparently, she constantly complained about her poverty, although everyone knew she had plenty of money. On the top floor of the house, in half-attic rooms, lived a music teacher named Chibitua; a Saint-Simonian shoemaker, Palasou; a turner; and a Spaniard, Mr. Sánchez de Mendoza. Chibitua composed sentimental romances and at the same time played an oboe in a band. He had many children. The poor man, who was perhaps playing the oboe or writing tearful romances, had taken on such a sad face that one might have thought he was always crying. Seeing him from a distance with his instrument, one might wonder if he was attached to it, since the oboe’s tip seemed more like a natural part of man than a musical instrument. The Saint-Simonian Palasou was an unfortunate man who owned a doorway shoe shop near the Spanish Gate. His wife had ruined him, spending all the household money on absurd whims. Madame Palasou was a prodigal wife who stole from her husband and spent the money on useless things. There were days when the shoemaker couldn’t eat because his wife had bought a rattle for a neighborhood child , or a purse for an acquaintance, or a tie pin for the young son of a friend. Then Palasou, in protest, made three grave decisions: first, to let his hair grow long; then, to have an affair with a neighborhood maid; and finally, to declare himself a supporter of Saint-Simon’s socialist doctrines to the world. The lathe operator spent his life in his garret, at the lathe, making noises that made all the neighbors shudder. He was a man the same color as the boxwood objects he turned with his machine, and many children were running around on the stairs. A Spanish Carlist emigrant, Don Francisco Sánchez de Mendoza, had lived in the upper attic for three months. Mr. Sánchez de Mendoza was a stout man with a black mustache and short sideburns, with a heavy, jaundiced, and sad air. Chipiteguy knocked on his doorbell, waited for someone to answer, and then went in. The emigrant’s wife opened the door, a sad woman with a shawl tied at the ends behind her back, and asked Chipiteguy in Spanish what he wanted. Chipiteguy explained that he was the master of the house, coming to collect the month’s rent, and the wife, somewhat flustered, went to tell her husband. Mr. Sánchez de Mendoza appeared dressed in a stained white canvas jacket and with a restless and timid air. “This citizen doesn’t pay,” Chipiteguy said to himself. Mr. Sánchez de Mendoza invited Chipiteguy into the dining room. This dining room, with its yellowish wallpaper and an alcove at the back, was somewhat comically poor. It had a cupboard built into the wall, with some cut-out papers pinned to the shelves; A window overlooking the courtyard, a pine table, a few broken chairs, each of a different shape, a couch full of humps, some illuminated lithographs pinned with drawing pins from the newspaper La Moda, and two large noble coats of arms painted in watercolor. There were some tacked curtains on the bedroom doors. At the window, pots of stunted geraniums. Looking out, one could see the courtyard, like a black cavern, crisscrossed with clothes hanging out to dry. Everything in the house exuded misery and neglect, with a certain note of comical petulance. “The whole furniture isn’t worth fifty francs,” said Chipiteguy, who had a good appraiser’s eye. Señor Sánchez de Mendoza began to speak, flustered, like someone looking for a way out of a difficult situation. He told Chipiteguy that he had been employed for some time at the Royal Palace of Don Carlos and that, due to the intrigues of enemies, he had been forced to leave. The emigrant seemed like a poor man filled with panic at finding himself alone and penniless in a strange country, and he gave the impression that he had no resources, nor did he think of anything he could do to find them. Sánchez de Mendoza didn’t speak French and was dismayed to find himself, by a whim of fate, in Bayonne, at Chipiteguy’s house on Basque Street. Mr. Sánchez de Mendoza, from what he said, had a wife and two children, a son and a daughter. While the emigrant spoke hurriedly and confusedly, Chipiteguy, convinced that he wouldn’t be paid, sat down on a chair in the room. As he examined the house, the air of misery seemed greater. In the next bedroom, visible through a crack in the door, two beds were visible on the floor and a battered trunk. The bedroom, divided by a colorful, torn and holey quilt, had undoubtedly been used for the Carlist’s two children. Mr. Sánchez de Mendoza, after much circumlocution, told Chipiteguy that he had no money at the time and asked him to wait a few days until he could pay him. “How many days?” Chipiteguy asked. Sánchez de Mendoza didn’t answer the question directly and began to express his woes, and at the same time he recounted his misfortunes, he spoke of his coat of arms. He was from La Mancha. His estates had been seized; he had used his money for the cause. His family was ancient and illustrious. “Have you heard of the Sánchez de Mendozas?” he humbly asked Chipiteguy. “Yes, that name sounds familiar. ” Chipiteguy, with his tendency to contemplate, saw that the small dining room sideboard, with its perforated notes, was empty, and noticed that the geraniums visible in the window were growing in torn pots, surrounded by colored cloths. “Good.” “All right,” said Chipiteguy, emerging from his absorbed state, ” but what do you intend to do?” “I’ll work if I find something that suits me, and let my children work too,” replied the emigrant. “But specifically, what are you going to do? Specifically!” This word was not in Mr. Sánchez de Mendoza’s repertoire . The emigrant consulted with his wife, who came out of the kitchen poorly dressed and haggard. Then a seventeen-year-old boy with the intelligent face of a sharp, hungry boy and a girl slightly older than him with the same appearance appeared. “Are they your children?” asked Chipiteguy. “Yes; this one is painting some coats of arms in watercolors; my girl knows how to embroider. Show this gentleman what you embroider.” Sánchez de Mendoza had noticed certain signs of sympathy in the landlord and wanted to take advantage of them. “I wish you would get out of this situation soon,” said Chipiteguy. for his family, and also so that you would pay me. “Thank you very much, sir.” “Thank you, no. I’ll insist on collecting.” He wasn’t a heartless man, but he wanted to collect. The boy and girl, both with their sharp, sickly air, returned to the dining room, he with some cards on which he had painted noble coats of arms in watercolor; she, with her colorful embroidery. Chipiteguy saw what the two were doing and reflected. He could take the boy to work in his house and would recommend the girl to Falcón’s antique shop. “I have an iron warehouse and I’ve been a ragpicker,” said Chipiteguy, ” so I’m not listed in the Gotha Almanac. If you and the boy want, let him come with me, I’ll put him to work and I’ll see what I can give him. ” “But do you want to have him as a servant?” asked Mr. Sánchez de Mendoza sadly. “As an employee. He’ll do the same things I do. I sometimes sweep the shop; he’ll sweep it too. I go to people’s houses to buy scrap iron. He’ll do the same. ” “And where will he eat?” “With me. ” “No, in the kitchen. ” “No. I’ll take care of supporting and clothing him; later I’ll see what I can give him. ” The boy listened to Chipiteguy and his father’s conversation with great anxiety. Chapter 6. THE SÁNCHEZ DE MENDOZAS. The Sánchez de Mendoza family had been traveling through different parts of France for more than six months. They had been to Bordeaux, Paris, and finally Bayonne, relentlessly pursued by poverty. Mr. Sánchez de Mendoza deluded himself that poverty had overtaken him, as a cold can; but the truth was that he had always lived poorly and in a bad way. Mr. Francisco Xavier Sánchez de Mendoza, Montemayor y Porras, was from La Mancha, from a small village between Minglanilla and Graja de Iniesta. Sánchez de Mendoza spoke of his house as if it were a palace and praised Minglanilla as if it were an emporium. His wife, a native of Cañete, on the other hand, considered her town the center of the universe and compared everything to it. Alvarito, Don Francisco’s son, had spent his early childhood between Graja de Iniesta and Cañete, and although he didn’t remember these towns well, he believed, on the word of his ancestors, that they were truly admirable. Alvarito’s father, Don Francisco Xavier, had raised his son in respect for Religion, the King, and the Nobility, as a nobleman of pure and illustrious lineage. Some bitter enemies—who doesn’t have them?—claimed that Señor Sánchez de Mendoza was called, simply, Francisco Sánchez, that perhaps his father or mother had the surname Mendoza, and that with the ease of arranging family affairs to one’s liking in a dark age, he called himself Sánchez de Mendoza. It was said that his father had been the town clerk of a town in La Mancha and had never owned a peseta. Don Francisco, on the other hand, claimed that his father was the second son of an illustrious and wealthy noble family and held a high office in Cuba. Sánchez de Mendoza showed his coat of arms to anyone who would see it, a coat of arms with more quarters than a Prussian village. The illustrious nobleman of the Sánchez de Mendoza family could not employ himself in vulgar and plebeian tasks. Like the dog in Samaniego’s fable , he thought this was due to having been born a dog and not a donkey. In his house on Vascos Street, Don Francisco Xavier devoted himself to watching how the members of his family worked, how his wife cooked, and how his daughter embroidered. He rarely painted the coats of arms his son drew in watercolor. The Sánchez de Mendoza and Montemayor families worried him too much for him to be able to devote himself to menial work. Don Francisco Xavier had discovered that one of his ancestors, a Pérez del Olmo, was a bastard, and the terrible discovery and the need to add a bastard bar to his coat of arms preoccupied him so much that this thought was never far from his mind. Mr. Sánchez de Mendoza considered himself a man of letters; he had written an article, Spaniards and Catholics Before Anything Else, and a printed sheet with this title: Vindication of Don Francisco Xavier Sánchez de Mendoza, Montemayor and Porras, of the slanderous charges made against him. He. Dedicated to Our Lord King Charles V. Those who had read this Vindication said that it was impossible to determine the slanderous charges made against Don Francisco Xavier; but the page spoke of a fitting punishment, venerable traditions, the hydra of anarchy, and the defense of the throne and the altar, and this, naturally, was already something. All these political commonplaces, used mainly by his coreligionists, sounded very pleasant in Don Francisco Xavier’s ears and at times moved him to such an extent that he felt tears welling up and his throat tightening. The article and the Vindication, the two most important works from his pen, worried the good gentleman greatly. He wondered if it was time to publish a second edition of them; he supposed that the whole world had taken them into account. With these preoccupations, it was impossible for the gentleman to settle for a common work. Sánchez de Mendoza’s wife, despite being younger than Don Francisco Xavier, seemed older; she was a poor, pale, thin, fateful woman who had always lived miserably and was always predicting misfortunes. For her, everything had to end, sooner or later, perfectly badly. Furthermore, this woman possessed a talent for interpreting her dreams, a talent she had passed on to her son, Alvaro, who fretted terribly about his nightmares and wanted to find a rational explanation for them. Alvarito’s mother tried to find absurd connections between dreams and events. Dreaming of bulls was good luck; on the other hand, dreaming of beans meant misfortune. Rice, in dreams, was always a good thing, and potatoes, bad. She never verified such absurd suppositions; but this, instead of convincing him of the futility of his hypotheses, confirmed them, because she mixed them with other superstitions, both magical and cabalistic. Alvarito was prone, like his mother, to fantasies and superstitions. As a child, he had been a sleepwalker, and his family had often found him sitting in his nightshirt in the kitchen or hiding under the bed. For a long time, he had suffered from great fears at night, waking up shortly after falling asleep, shuddering, screaming, and remaining frightened and in great anguish for long periods of time. Alvarito thought a lot about his dreams; his mother made him pay attention to them. When he was strong, he dreamed of memories from very distant times; on the other hand, when he was weak, restless, or anxious, he dreamed of more recent events. In his dreams, Alvarito was always brave, daring, and cruel. “Am I like that?” he sometimes wondered, worried. He often dreamed of the sea. He walked along a pier that advanced through stormy waves, from one side to the other, with no end in sight. Other times, he walked along a path, amid shadows, and at the end, a tunnel of light appeared to him. With the miserable and sad existence he had led, he was weak and nervous. His life, to him, seemed tragic. He vaguely remembered the trip he had made with his mother and sister, under difficult circumstances, from Cañete to Vergara, where his father was employed in the offices of the Royal Family. He remembered his departure from Vergara to France as a pitiful episode. The trip to Bordeaux seemed like something enormous; the French were monsters descending upon them, and his father appeared to him then like an Orpheus, dominating the beasts. Then, as time passed, the poor Orpheus, Don Francisco Xavier, began to shrink in his memory. For him, the period began when a son who had looked up to his father as a role model begins to criticize him and find fault with him. “Wasn’t his father too talkative?” Alvarito wondered. “Wasn’t he too selfish?” So, little by little, his affection and admiration went to his mother and his sister, both of them long-suffering and resigned, who did not go out for walks, nor did they go to get into the mood, nor did they tell lies at the gatherings. Carlists. Alvarito was underdeveloped for his seventeen years. He was tall, but narrow-shouldered, with an expressive air and a poor complexion. Spiritually, he was a scatterbrained boy, aimless; he had spent part of his childhood in Cañete, in the home of some uncles, poor but proud and fantastic people, where they barely ate, yet boasted of being strong. In that house, life was lived, mainly on the outside, with the sole concern of appearances. They talked about how they ate well, how they had plenty of money. Alvarito’s uncles believed the entire town was spying on them and found it necessary to make themselves important by means of lies. In the six months he had been in France, Alvarito had learned French. The boy retained the worries of his father and mother and couldn’t escape them. At first, he didn’t want to leave the house. He was scared. The street seemed like the natural enemy of his poor home and every Frenchman a monster, devouring Spanish families. Alvarito had thought, following his father’s instructions, of joining the Carlist army; but he wasn’t old enough, and the situation within the party was so bad that he feared he wouldn’t find the right moment. Young Sánchez de Mendoza wanted to share his father’s monarchical enthusiasm with his fervor ; but it wasn’t so easy, and no matter how hard he tried to exalt himself, the question of legitimacy didn’t concern him. He had heard the pros and cons of this issue discussed in Bayonne and Bordeaux . Alvarito wanted to believe that the war was the holy crusade of the good against the evil, of the religious against the impious. Alvarito wanted to believe that the Carlists were all honorable and chivalrous, incapable of villainy; that Don Carlos was a saint, and that honor, loyalty, the Fatherland, and the King had an altar in the heart of every Carlist. He didn’t know if, in the accepted cliché, the altar was in the chest or in the heart. Surely it wasn’t in his spleen or his liver. Despite his pectoral or cardiac altar, Alvaro heard talk at every turn of mischief, shady dealings, and betrayals in the Carlist camp. When thinking about joining Don Carlos’s army, Alvarito’s main concern was the fear of losing face. Would he have enough courage? Death didn’t deter him; but he assumed it couldn’t always be easy to control his nerves. His fear was that they would see him in a moment of depression. He feared he wouldn’t be able to live up to the others, especially the role model he’d imagined. He sometimes thought that perhaps his lack of energy stemmed from feeling weak from poor nutrition. Alvarito knew little; he had learned to read, write, and do arithmetic, and how to paint noble coats of arms in watercolor, which his father sold to Spanish emigrants, aristocrats, and the wealthy. Alvarito entertained the illusion that he might possess some talent as a painter. He liked the prints that reproduced contemporary paintings by David, Ingres, and Baron de Gros, and sometimes imagined that he would rather be a painter than a soldier. He had also seen engravings that reproduced paintings by Ribera, Zurbarán, and Velázquez, which amazed him and seemed very bad to him. “How could that be liked?” he wondered, and he didn’t understand. Alvarito was a very nervous, very restless boy who suffered great terrors at night . The preoccupation with dreams, which his mother had instilled in him, frightened him. Many nights he would wake up trembling and think he heard a man breathing, spying on him a few feet from the bed. The neighbors in the house on Rue des Vascos terrified him. There was an old woman in mourning whom he had met on the stairs several times at dusk, and she had looked at him with a suggestive smile , and thinking about her gave him goosebumps. The dark rooms, the lonely avenues at dusk, the riverbanks, all this impressed him. The same scenes sometimes gave him a feeling of mystery and Terror. There was one he’d seen in a shop window that disturbed him. It depicted an elegant lady with a slender figure, standing next to a long-haired young man wearing belt loops and a tailcoat. The scene took place in the hall of a palace, in front of a piano. The lady had a languid air; the man, on the other hand, looked at her with the eyes of a madman. Alvarito didn’t know what it represented; but the scene gave him a sense of vertigo. As if predisposed to seeing strange things, he occasionally saw them or thought he saw them. One of the times he went out at night in Bayonne to deliver an errand to a Carlist figure—his father was ill—he was walking down an almost dark street, with walls on either side and the occasional street lamp, when he saw a small, square, petulant hunchback with a gray mustache and beard approaching. A short time later, another hunchback, and shortly after that, another. These three hunchbacks frightened him so much that he ran home. Later, he and his mother discussed for a long time whether these three hunchbacks were real or imaginary, and if they were imaginary, what they could represent. There came a time when Alvarito noticed that alarm and unease arose in him before the motive, and that only afterward did he find the motive to legitimize his alarm. It took him a long time to understand this, and when he did, he felt more miserable and more helpless than ever. Chapter 7. FIRST CONTACTS WITH REALITY. When Chipiteguy made his proposal to take Alvarito, he looked at his parents’ expressions, and seeing that they both accepted, he went to his room, dressed in his best clothes, furtively kissed his mother and sister, and left the house with the old ragman. The two of them walked along the Muelle de los Vascos, crossed the Panecau Bridge, and entered the Plaza del Reducto. Alvarito was not very happy in Chipiteguy’s store and shop ; everything seemed disorderly and dirty to him. But when they called for lunch and invited him to wash his hands, and he saw the abundantly set table and sat down between Manón and Andre Mari, he decided that if they didn’t throw him out for being clumsy, he would stay there. He planned to do his best. In the afternoon, he willingly did everything they told him; he also had a sumptuous dinner, and after dinner, Tomascha took the little Spaniard, as they called Alvarito in the house, to a garret on the third floor filled with old junk and showed him his bed. In that garret, there was a shelf with some books, a stopped cuckoo clock, and on some old chests, a large quantity of apples, pears, and quinces, which gave off a wonderful aroma. On the beams of that loft, there were many chandeliers, and Alvarito could watch their gymnastic exercises on their threads. Through the window, one could see the river and the rooftops of the Basque Wharf. From the first moments Alvarito was at Chipiteguy’s house, it was clear that he was active and eager to work; the trouble was that, in addition to these conditions and his good intentions, he was also very shy. Alvarito wasn’t used to working. He also didn’t have the ease or confidence in himself. He was suspicious and thought he wouldn’t be nice or suitable. This idea, and the thought of having to earn a living any way he could, gave him a withdrawn and awkward attitude. Chipiteguy laughed at him. “The little aristocrat, the little Spaniard with heraldry, seems to be a little off his rocker,” he would say to his granddaughter. “Leave him alone, Grandpa; he’ll do better. The poor fellow has all his good intentions. ” “Yes, that’s true; that’s why I don’t say anything to him. He’s a fine boy, very delicate, he won’t keep a penny. He has a somewhat comical sense of pride. ” “That’s not a defect.” “No, no.” But how clumsy these aristocrats are! When their income is gone and they have to emigrate, they are no longer good for anything. After two or three weeks at the warehouse, Chipiteguy assigned Alvarito to keep accounts. The place where young Sánchez de Mendoza had to work, not very cheerful, saddened the boy. It was an almost dark room, with A large window overlooking the courtyard, its glass broken, made up of papers glued together, already dirty and dusty. In this room, there was a black bookshelf with bundles of bills, a cash box, a table, and two benches. From the window, one could see the piles of filthy scrap metal and the bales of rags. There were many rats throughout the house, some so bold that they stared shamelessly at Alvarito, which amused him. At night, they could be heard gnawing at the woodwork. Frechón, Chipiteguy’s clerk, a moody and ill-tempered fellow, declared war on Alvarito the moment he saw him and did everything he could to make things worse for him. Frechón always gave him a dirty look, hissed at him over the slightest thing, and when he wasn’t, he would begin to whistle, dislocate his fingers, and make an unpleasant noise, like the rattling of a skeleton’s bones, which unsettled Alvaro. Sometimes he pulled his fingers to produce the sound, and other times he clenched his knuckles, which resonated like a ratchet. Frechón, who was a French republican and patriot, mortified the boy as a Carlist Spaniard. “Don Carlos is an imbecile,” he would often tell him, like someone spitting; “the Spanish are asses.” Frechón asked Alvarito strange questions. “Do you know what the liberals will do, in the end, to your King, to that fool Don Carlos?” he asked him one day. “What?” “Take him to the guillotine and crash.” Another day he asked him: “Do you know who Marat was? ” “A monster. ” “That’s what you royalists think. He was an admirable man, who demanded the heads of three hundred thousand aristocrats. ” Another day he said to him: “Haven’t you heard of Pope Joan? ” “I haven’t.” –Well, she was a woman who had been a pope and who gave birth while she was in a procession. Alvarito was developing a great dislike for Frechón and thought that one day he would have to challenge him. Alvarito often reflected on his situation. He believed that depending on a ragpicker and living in his house was heroic for an aristocrat like himself. More than anything, he believed true heroism consisted in overcoming ridicule. Finding himself well as a clerk in a rag and scrap metal shop had its merit. This was already so socially low that it prevented him from being ridiculous. He preferred the ragpicker to a shirt shop, or a costume jewelry store, or a glove shop, where he would have had to deal with distinguished customers who would have looked him down. Besides, Alvarito had the beautiful excuse of being in love with the boss’s granddaughter, and he thought that with love, there could be no more ridicule. Alvarito was greatly afraid of making himself ridiculous. The thought alone made him pale, and his pride painted opportunities for humiliation everywhere. Many people in the neighborhood, as if they had guessed his weakness, seemed intent on mocking him. The boy from a nearby shop on the Rue Bourg Neuf, a fishing tackle store called The Fisherman, always called him a ragpicker. He had undoubtedly noticed that it bothered him, and for that very reason he repeated the word more frequently . Several times the boy went out into the street with a sack, threw it over his shoulder, and shouted, “Galonero! I buy old rags!” and looked at the balconies. Alvarito, mortified, pretended not to notice. Claquemain, the cart boy, also showed dislike for young Sánchez de Mendoza. With his large mustache, unshaven beard, and red eyes, he often assumed a threatening air. Sometimes he would blacken his face with charcoal and make faces, stick out his tongue, and cross his eyes to frighten the boy. Alvarito would tremble with fear. Near Chipiteguy’s house lived a madman who walked up and down with a hat pulled down over his ears and a worn-out overcoat. Sometimes he would have fits and then let out terrifying screams. The boys would make fun of him and call him Haddock and Dry Gut, and he He muttered a series of violent phrases against them. This madman had large ears, crooked eyes, and a comical face. Whenever the madman saw Alvarito, he would approach him and often shout : “Come on, come on… to Spain… to kill… to kill… Long live the King!” And a parrot on a balcony who had learned the refrain would also repeat: “Come on, come on… to Spain… to kill… to kill… Long live the King!” Alvarito felt, especially at first, great sadness at finding himself in the ragpicker’s shop. There, in Chipiteguy’s house, no one knew him; he understood that thinking about his poor situation was mortifying himself on a whim, that no one noticed him; but he couldn’t avoid feeling ashamed of being employed in a ragpicker’s shop. Little by little, this shame began to pass, and he thought he would be very happy if luck allowed him to replace Chipiteguy by marrying Manón. At the ragman’s house, Alvarito met Don Eugenio de Aviraneta and heard him talking. Don Eugenio often went to eat in the company of Chipiteguy, and these days the meal was even more elaborate than usual. Aviraneta joked a lot with Manón and flirted with her; he also used to talk to Alvarito, asking him questions about his life and family and laughing at the boy’s answers. One day, he heard that the relationship between Chipiteguy and Aviraneta stemmed from the fact that they were both Freemasons. This supposition piqued the curiosity of young Sánchez de Mendoza. Could those two men be Freemasons? Did they belong to the sinister sect? Aviraneta and Chipiteguy used to talk a lot alone after dinner, with a glass of liquor in front of them, one smoking his pipe, and the other his Havana cigar. They talked about people they had met, and Aviraneta recounted countless events and anecdotes about people he had encountered in France, Egypt, Greece, America, and Spain. Chipiteguy listened with delight. Sometimes he would ask: “What happened to that Nantil? What did that Cugnet de Montarlot do?” When Alvarito first heard of Jacobins, Franciscans, rope makers, and people from the Bishopric, he believed that the French Revolution had been carried out by the friars. Alvarito was too polite to spy on his master and decided to ask him questions. When he saw that Chipiteguy wasn’t bothered by them, but , on the contrary, liked them, he had long conversations with the old man, especially after dinner. “But were the men of the French Revolution really good ?” Alvaro asked him once. “There were all kinds; some were too good and too honorable.” I once went with Basterreche to the Ministry of Finance during the Terror, and we saw the minister, Mr. Des Tournelles, who fixed his stockings with a needle in a parlor and had millions in the coffers. Of course, there were many abuses. Here it was reported that a member of the Convention—some said Cavaignac, others said Pinet—promised to save the life of the father of a Mademoiselle Labarrere if she surrendered to the Convention, and then it seems the father was guillotined. Men, seen up close, are undoubtedly worth little,” said the old ragman; “there won’t be a Caesar or an Alexander just around the corner.” Chipiteguy remembered many scenes from the Terror in Paris, Bordeaux, and Bayonne, and he remembered them in every detail. He had also known the city of Strasbourg under the tyranny of the revolutionary friar Eulogius Schneider and his society La Propaganda. He had spoken with Schneider, who was a disciple of the enlightened Weisshaupt. This Schneider was the Marat of Strasbourg, a German Marat , preacher and mystic. Chipiteguy saw him in Paris when he was guillotined. In the capital, for some time, Chipiteguy met Etchepare and some other Basques, friends of Basterreche, Pereyra, etc. For some time they met in social circles at the home of this Pereyra, a Jew from Bayonne, who had a tobacco shop in Paris during the Terror , on the Rue Saint-Denis, where he could see as a sample a red Phrygian cap. When Pereyra was arrested, naturally, the gathering broke up. Afterward, Chipiteguy left Paris and served as a Republican soldier in the Vendée, before moving to Bayonne. Chipiteguy was a friend of Gaston Etchepare, the uncle of Aviraneta from Bidart. Another of his acquaintances, a comrade to whom he owed favors, Juan Gorostarzu, had been guillotined in Ezpeleta for being a counterrevolutionary. Shortly after, when the government suppressed the Visitandinas convent in Hasparren, Gorostarzu’s sister-in-law, who was in this convent, went to his house, Arozteguia de Ezpeleta, and opened a school, where she taught the boys and girls their basic education while she spun. Manon’s father and the Basque poet Captain Duvoisin, whom Chipiteguy had known as a child, had studied at this school. Chipiteguy legitimized the Terror. It was necessary, he said, to establish a new society with fewer abuses, more justice, and more freedom. According to him, throughout the Basque Country and the Landes, the population was against the French republicans and in favor of the Spanish monarchists, ready to surrender to them; hence, the conventionalists Pinet and Cavainac had to resort to extreme violence. The efforts of Labour’s revolutionary committee, formed by Hiriart, Dithurbide, and Daguerrezar, had been unsuccessful, nor had the proclamations calling for emigrants, written in Basque and French by Juan de Luz, with saints omitted even from the names of towns and signed by Izoard, Meillan, Chaudron, Rousseau, and Paganel. Chipiteguy told Alvarito many stories of his time, in great detail; the development of political intrigues, how most of the town’s rich people had acquired their fortunes, and the course of events of the Revolution, the Empire, and the Restoration. Alvarito was shocked that the old man was enthusiastic about the Revolution. On the other hand, he always spoke badly of the war. “_War_!” he would say. “_It’s an abominable filth. ” “Really? ” “Yes. You’ve heard Don Eugenio speak badly of the war, and he’s right; besides being filthy, it’s a miserable stupidity.” He would also add at other times: “That sauce of war must be tasted if you have the opportunity. You learn to know men. ” “Yes, that’s how it should be,” Alvarito would affirm. “Which doesn’t prevent it from being an abominable filth.” Sometimes Chipiteguy would say with conviction: “That poor Maximilian was deceived.” “Which Maximilian? ” “Robespierre.” Alvarito felt it was an obligation of his job to listen to the old man’s opinions without protest. Chipiteguy also spoke of the friends he had had during the Empire. He frequently recalled the revolutionary writer Bonneville, an enthusiastic republican, who in his old age had a secondhand bookshop in Paris, in the Latin Quarter, on the Passage des Jacobins, and whom he had last seen fifteen years earlier. This Bonneville had written quite a few books, among them a very absurd one: _The Jesuits Expelled from Freemasonry and Their Daggers Broken by the Freemasons_, in which he tried to prove, with very fantastic arguments, that the Jesuits were Freemasons, of the Rosy Cross sect. Chipiteguy had also met Albertine Marat, Marat’s sister, who lived in 1838 in a garret on the Rue de la Barillerie, in the utmost isolation, and worked making clock hands for the Breguet house. He had also visited Robespierre’s sister, Charlotte, unknown in Paris, who called herself Mademoiselle Delaroche. Aviraneta and Chipiteguy sometimes argued. Aviraneta said that the French had arranged the history of the French Revolution so well that they had given everything a grandiose air; thus the storming of the Bastille, the Battle of Valmy, and the Battle of Jemmapes, which were not in themselves great events, seemed epic. “No, no,” Chipiteguy replied. “Those events were considered as symbols. When there were no visitors at the ragman’s house, they read the newspapers. They received _El Constitucional_ and _Le Journal des Debats_ from Paris, and the two Bayonne newspapers, _El Faro_ and _El Centinela de los Pirineos_. After-dinner conversation at night had other compensations. Sometimes Manón sang and played the piano, and frequently his cousin Rosa and other friends came over and they danced. Some nights they played checkers and chess. Alvarito almost always lost. He had no talent for these games. Since Alvarito was poorly dressed, Chipiteguy sent the boy to the tailor to have a fashionable suit made for him, which he looked very good in. On Sunday mornings, Alvarito got up later than on workdays; He dressed elegantly in his new suit, and while a beggar with his barrel organ passed in front of the house in the Redoubt, almost always playing the waltz from The Carnival of Venice, he went down the stairs and out into the square. He saw the procession of water carriers, girls, and Jews coming across the pontoon bridge at Saint Esprit. He went to the Cathedral, heard mass, and then went to see his family. He took all the money they gave him to give to his mother, and then she would give him a franc or two back for his pocket, as she told him. Alvarito stayed to eat with his family; but, despite his love for his family, he found the food on the Rue des Basques very poor. Alvarito had never eaten as he did at Chipiteguy’s house; he had probably assumed, even before entering it, that the natural state of humanity was hunger. He had never seen, until then, those succulent meat dishes, the white and fatty capons, the stuffed turkeys, the rosy fish, the vegetables of all kinds, the truffles, the asparagus, the butter at will, the good brands of wine drunk straight from the grass, the strong and aromatic coffee, and the variety of liqueurs. Chipiteguy’s house gave young Sánchez de Mendoza a strangely cynical impression. How could one live so inwardly without thinking at all about others? It seemed absurd to him that one could spend what one spent there on food and drink. The Chipiteguy family’s regime was nothing like that of his uncles’ house in La Mancha. There, it was all pomp, decorum, and outward life, without any reality; here, on the contrary, it was all positive. In Chipiteguy’s family, ostentation was of no importance. One of the places that amazed Alvarito in the house was the kitchen, large, bright, spacious, with all the polished utensils, where the fire burned from morning to night. The kitchen was considered the most important part of the entire house; nothing was missing there. The same thing happened in the dining room; the furniture wasn’t elegant, but the tablecloths were magnificent; the cutlery was solid silver; the glassware was very good: there were two or three porcelain sets, and a superb one, for banquets, with gold rims. Alvarito, with the treatment at the Reducto house, was filling out and becoming solid and strong. After three months of living with Chipiteguy’s family, the young man’s spirited and weak air disappeared. Frechón and Claquemain reproached him for having gained weight and told him at every turn that the Spaniards were starving, that they ate nothing but hard chickpeas, and that only occasionally. On Sundays, after spending the day with his family, Alvarito would walk around the town. Those Sundays in Bayonne seemed very sad and boring to him ; but it was worse to stay at home. In the poor, gloomy apartment on the dark Calle de los Vascos, there was no joy in the air. His mother was always washing dishes or cleaning; his sister Dolores was embroidering; and his father, Don Francisco Xavier, chatted constantly about politics, Carlism, and, above all, genealogy and coat of arms. Mr. Sánchez de Mendoza was busy mulling over his family’s coat of arms and that bastardization bar that appeared on some Pérez de Mendoza coats of arms. Olmo, his ancestors. At dusk, they lit a candlestick of oil in the dining room, which gave off the light of blessed souls. At night, no fire was lit in the kitchen of the nobleman’s house, and they ate cold food. Alvarito watched his mother place on the table some chipped plates, chipped cups, three different glasses, and metal cutlery. Alvarito saw that if he dined there, his father wouldn’t appreciate it, because it diminished the already meager amount of food. The boy said goodbye to his family and headed toward the Place du Redoubt. The Bayonne dusk seemed very sad to him, on the banks of the Adour, on the avenues of the marina and those of Boufflers. The river stretched wide, like silver; the black wooden docks of some warehouses in the Saint Esprit neighborhood raised their rotating arms, with their pulleys at the tips; The Citadel, on the right bank of the Adour, rose with its gray wall on a green hill with grassy banks. That river, almost deserted, with few boats, stretched out peacefully, the color of pearl. In the distance, toward its mouth, one could see a line of low hills with trees, a few people on the banks, and a few fishermen, motionless, fishing rods in hand. Sometimes, on splendid evenings, with the sky pink and filled with burning clouds, the wide river took on shimmering scarlet and mother-of-pearl reflections. In the autumn, on foggy days, everything took on a spectral air, especially the boats moored at the dock. Alvarito was often overcome by the sadness of those twilights; but he fought it as best he could. Occasionally, when he arrived in front of the house on a rainy day, he heard Manon playing the piano. Instead of going up, he would linger in the Place du Redoubt, soaking himself in water and dreaming. What a sight he would have done to win her over! One moment he would invent a thousand intrigues from adventure novels, each as impossible as the other. Then he would think sadly that he had no way of attracting Manon. At night, after dinner, he would look out of his garret window, smoke and fantasize, seeing the Place du Redoubt in front of him with its roofs, its walls, and its sentry boxes, and the river of dark waters, truly sinister. It was a somber and menacing spectacle to watch at night how the black waters of the Nive entered, silently and with a confused murmur, into the wide, equally black bed of the Adour. On stormy days, the wind would whip hard at the Place du Redoubt, especially from the northwest. At night, one could hear it buzzing and whistling, and sometimes lamenting with its mournful moans. In the attic where Alvarito slept, the raindrops echoed on the roof, making a metallic sound that was pleasant to hear from bed. After a while, Alvarito had supporters in the Reducto house; Chipiteguy thought highly of him; Andre Mari and Tomascha were on his side, because he was obedient and never missed Sunday Mass; Manon treated him with a certain friendly disdain, as if she believed it wasn’t worth wasting time talking to an insignificant young man. She would position herself like a girl next to a boy. Manon lent Alvarito several books. He was patient and eager to educate himself, and he read Chateaubriand’s *Les Martyrs*; *Voyage of Young Anacharsis*; *Telemachus*; and other emphatic books, capable of making even the most sleepless sleeper sleep standing up. After this dull reading, he liked Robinson Crusoe very much. Frechón told him that he should read some volumes that Chipiteguy had in his office, The Crimes of the Kings of France, from Clovis to Louis XVI, and The Crimes of the Popes, from Saint Peter to Pius VI, both works from La Vicomterie de Saint Samson, written with great passion, and which caused a great scandal when published. He also read, on Frechón’s advice, the pamphlets of Pablo Luis Courier, and later Don Quixote, which had a great effect on him and inspired him to read romances and books of chivalry. But where could these novels of knights-errant be found? He didn’t know. Many times, in a pained voice, Alvaro would recite the romance of the Marquis of Mantua, which appears in Don Quixote: “Where are you, my lady, that my pain does not grieve you? Either you don’t know, lady, or you are false and disloyal.” And as he recited this romance, he thought of Manon. PART TWO THE SIMANCAS Chapter 8. MANEUVERS OF AVIRANETA. Here the author would have to begin this part by asking forgiveness from the manes of Aristotle, because he is going to leave aside, in his novel, the three famous unities: time, place, and action, as respectable as three abbesses or three ladies of the palace with their corresponding pillows and bedspreads. The author is going to continue his story and march cross-country, braiding, more or less skillfully, a historical branch and other novelistic ones. What the devil! One is at the crossroads of a long historical novel and must guide the narrative from its branch to the end. We will go, then, for better or worse, sometimes stumbling in the thickets of fantasy, and at other times sinking in the swamp of history. Before the bloody events of Estella, where four Carlist generals lost their lives, Aviraneta had begun to organize his action against Carlism and to propagandize in favor of peace, especially in Guipúzcoa. He entrusted the management of the enterprise in this province to his cousin Don Lorenzo de Alzate, to Orbegozo, and to the political leader Amilibia, all three from San Sebastián, who began to work actively along the lines of Hernani and Andoain. The first news that Aviraneta had of the split that was taking place in Carlism came to him from the Court. He learned that in Madrid, across from Covachuelas, in a shop selling rifles and laces, there lived a widow who had remarried a Carlist colonel named Calcena, a very active man, a man of courage, a friend of Cabrera, and who corresponded with General Aldasoro, who lived in Bayonne. This Calcena was an adventurer, a bandit who had spent a long time in America as a soldier and a gambler. Aviraneta indicated to Minister Pita Pizarro the usefulness of violating Calcena’s correspondence, and through it, the preparations made by Arias Teijeiro’s friends to get rid of Maroto were revealed . The split remained hidden from the Carlists for quite some time, until it erupted and became public with the Estella shootings. Since these executions left Maroto and his friends triumphant, that is, they gave victory to the moderate Carlists over the absolutists, Aviraneta indicated to the Madrid government the tactics they should follow, summarized in these pieces of advice: first, try to promote dissension among the Marotists who formed the moderate military group, which was then strong and compact; second, secretly support the theocratic and intransigent absolutists so that they would attack the Marotists; and third, prevent the Carlists, who were in favor of compromise, from reaching an understanding with the Cristinos, who had similar tendencies, a thought that Father Cirilo and the Princess of Beira harbored within themselves . Despite all their fanfare, the absolutist and theocratic faction succumbed so completely to Maroto’s blows, due to the inertia of its leaders and the cowardice of Don Carlos, that all efforts to revive the party of the Puros, as they called themselves, and to get them back to the fight against the Marotistas were useless. The most important men of the apostolic faction accepted defeat and humiliation, convinced that their cause was lost. The Pure Absolutists bowed their heads. They could not be counted on. Around this time, Don Eugenio drafted and ordered the printing of a false proclamation , addressed to the Navarrese and signed by the Capuchin Friar Ignacio de Larraga, confessor of Don Carlos and one of those expelled after the shootings of Estella. This Father Larraga, known as “Pico de Oro” (Golden Beak), according to the people of Baztan, was a somewhat grotesque friar. From confessor to the Duke of Granada, who was an old saint, full of religious scruples, who prayed at all hours, in every corner, he had become confessor to Don Carlos, replacing Don Pedro Ratón. It was said that Larraga, during the siege of Zubiri, and General Ros de Olano confirmed this, had advanced toward the Cristinos and had given them a pedantic lecture, in the midst of which, from time to time, he would say in a thunderous voice: Ego sum Pater Larraga secundum Apostolorum. In the false proclamation of Aviraneta, attributed to Larraga, it was claimed that Maroto and his companions had sold out to the liberals, which was the same as being sold out to the devil. The apocryphal speech ended thus: “Long live Religion! Long live Navarre and its volunteers!” At that time, Aviraneta also wrote a letter that, when translated into Basque, was widely circulated throughout the provinces. It was a fake letter written by a Basque farmer to a tinsmith, in which he attempted to sow discord between Basques and Castilians. This letter recounted how the war had begun, and blamed the Castilians for their lack of success, being lazy and lazy, who needed a horse or a donkey to travel a few leagues. After other explanations, malicious to the common people, he asserted that the Basques longed for peace, and ended the letter with this proverb: “Never mind , you will be a fool , you will be a fool.” which meant: “A slow donkey must be given a crazy muleteer, and a dead donkey, the barley in the tail.” Many of those leaves, in Basque, were introduced into the Carlist camp. Aviraneta also recommended to his commissioners from the Hernani and Andoain lines that they order taverns and snack bars to be set up in the surrounding areas and that girls who wanted to see their boyfriends or relatives be allowed to pass easily into the Carlist camp . In this way, relationships began to be established between those from one camp and those from the other, and the idea spread through the Carlist ranks, almost always a precursor to the abandonment of a cause, the idea that deals were being made behind the army’s back, and that the leaders were preparing to abandon them and betray them. From then on, as if given a command, everyone began to talk about the hardships of war, the miserable lives they led, the disparity in treatment between officers and enlisted men. Peace began to appear as a state of perfect happiness. The Avirantian agents made it known to the people and soldiers that the great obstacle to achieving peace was Don Carlos and the tinsmiths of Castile, the former ambitious, the latter wealthy, who, with their well-stocked incomes in southern estates and foreign banks, did not feel the misery of war . Don Eugenio, by then, was restless; he had entered into correspondence with a former childhood teacher, Don Mariano Arizmendi, a somewhat gloomy man with a dour disposition, who was highly influential among Carlist figures. Arizmendi and he did not entirely agree; but they repeatedly discussed the need for an agreement to end the war , a word that spread throughout both the Carlist and liberal camps. Without a doubt, at that moment, the word “agreement” summed up the aspirations of both parties. The Cristinos could not consider themselves victorious in the war, nor the Carlists completely defeated; it was, therefore, essential that both sides give something in their respective points of view. At the same time that this transformation in ideas was taking place, Don Eugenio was preparing the false documents that he would use in the file that he planned to introduce into the court of Don Carlos. He called this file the Simancas. Despite the fact that the Carlist Junta of Bayonne was constantly spying on him and Don Eugenio, who was following him, had relations with some of the most perspicuous Carlists. One of the people who gave him information about the divisions and quarrels in Don Carlos’s camp was Don Manuel Mazarambros, former reporter for the Council of Castile. Mazarambros, an intelligent person, was ill, a hypochondriac, and did not want to take an active part in politics. Mazarambros was in correspondence with the intendant Arizaga, a corrupt, very shrewd, and careful man, one of Maroto’s friends and advisors, and through him Aviraneta learned what was being thought at General Headquarters. Don Eugenio also took advantage of the information provided by his friend Vinuesa. When those expelled by Maroto arrived in France, Aviraneta had informants in both Carlist camps and knew day by day and hour by hour what each was doing. The actions of the Maroto supporters were more public, and there were official reports about them; those of the anti-Maroto supporters were more secret. Don Eugenio was in contact with Colonel Aguirre, one of the staunch anti-Maroto supporters, and the latter wrote to him two or three times a week. Bertache and Orejón did the same. For the intrigues of the anti-Maroto supporters in Bayonne, he could rely on María de Taboada and Don Francisco Xavier Sánchez de Mendoza, whom Aviraneta had met through Alvarito and whom he sometimes invited to dinner at the Iturri Inn on Basque Street. But Don Eugenio also had other information. The intransigent fanatics, enemies of Maroto, had formed secret societies, veritable clubs, in which they continually conspired against the general. The two principal anti-Maroto clubs were one in Azpeitia and the other in Tolosa. In Azpeitia, Aviraneta had as a confidant a certain Odriozola, a captain in the Carlist army, an elderly man who had been in America, where he lost his gambling career, and who attributed his misfortune to Maroto. In Tolosa, there was an officer named Rezusta, who hated Maroto for his lack of religion, which did not prevent him from being one of the most disbelieving officers in Don Carlos’s army. Chapter 9. THE ENEMIES. Aviraneta had many enemies in Bayonne. The Carlists distrusted him, and, although they did not know for whom or why he worked, they clearly understood that he was not for them. At the same time, Valdés, the one with the cats, Salvador, and Martínez López discredited him everywhere. Aviraneta’s claim to be a patriot and an enthusiastic liberal with convictions deeply offended them. They, systematic farmers, went with whoever paid the most. It seemed very natural to them to change sides if this suited them. Martínez López wrote libels for or against . The latter was done by shamelessly flattering the Count of San Luis, shortly before the Revolution of 1854. Everyone in the Spanish Consulate was an enemy of Don Eugenio, starting with Consul Gamboa. At the time, he had an agent who was his right-hand man, Don Prudencio Nenín, a former merchant from Bilbao, established in Bayonne, an active and energetic man. Nenín had business dealings with the consul, had been involved in Muñagorri’s first venture, and lived at the inn of France. Aviraneta had also moved to this inn by then, realizing that it was easier to enter and leave a hotel without being spied on than a private home. Nenín was always trailing Aviraneta, following his every move, something that deeply displeased Don Eugenio; he could not resist this spying by the liberals, by his own kind. At that time, a somewhat mysterious couple appeared at the inn: the Count and Countess of Hervilly, whom Nenín began to accompany constantly. The Count seemed a strange, sad man, with a sinister air, very neat, always wearing gloves. He had a pale, thin, intelligent face ; a dull, timbreless voice, and spoke in a somewhat cold and disdainful manner. It was said that he was the son or nephew of a French legitimist general, of the same title, and, it was said, he was planning to enter Spain and enlist in the Carlist army, a rather unusual thing, as he walked with a severe limp. The Count was part of the group of foreign legitimist aristocrats who considered themselves entitled to intervene in Spain. At the head of this group was the Prince of Lichnowsky. The Prince of Lichnowsky was a proud, fantastic German. He believed that his title of prince entitled him to anything. He spent a long time in Spain in the Carlist ranks. A few years after the war, while in his country during the 1848 revolution, he was made a member of the Frankfurt Parliament. There, he tried to treat the Republicans with contempt and haughtiness, and during a popular riot, he was killed in the streets. The Count of Hervilly was a legitimist, a realist, for whom the world had two hemispheres: one, that of the aristocrats, with all the rights, and the other, that of the non-aristocrats, with all the duties. The Countess of Hervilly, a very beautiful woman, Cuban or Mexican, spoke perfect Spanish and French. Nenín introduced Aviraneta to the Count and Countess. Don Eugenio felt a mysterious and distrustful attitude toward them. He was shocked that she had any desire to be intimate with him. The conspirator was not vain and knew very well that he was not in the position to make an impression on women. The Countess of Hervilly’s curiosity about his life prompted him to find out who that curious lady was. He asked the hotel porters and the landlady for information about the lady. They portrayed her as a strange person, with exotic tastes, lazy, ardent, and very capricious. She was very fond of flowers, perfumes, and a lazy, indolent lifestyle. Her name was Sonia. Some said she was Cuban, others Haitian, others Gypsy, and still others Jewish or Russian. Apparently, she had her husband under her thumb. What was this couple doing in Bayonne? Why were they there? What were they expecting? The hotel staff didn’t know. The Countess of Hervilly would appear in the hotel dining room accompanied by her husband and Nenín, and she would visit the Spanish Consulate with her husband. The Count was always very friendly and gallant with his wife. Aviraneta thought that if anyone in Bayonne knew anything about those mysterious counts, it had to be Luci Belz, the employee at the Inn of Commerce, and went to see her. Luci Belz told her that the Countess of Hervilly was said to be an adventuress, a comedian, or a dancer, who had had many affairs. It was difficult to understand whether the Count was aware of his wife’s adventures. But apparently he wasn’t. “I’ll have to find out more,” Luci concluded. A few days later, the employee at the Hôtel du Commerce called Aviraneta. She had learned several things. The Count of Hervilly, so they said, was a somewhat monstrous man: he was almost completely missing one leg and used a rubber one to walk. Of his two hands, his left was like a duck’s, with a web between each finger ; his right, on the other hand, was enormously strong. If the Count ever fell, he refused help so that no one would notice he was missing his leg. He explained his clumsiness by saying he was rheumatic. On that battered body, the Count had a distinguished head; but, apparently, this head was hairless and replaced by a gray-black wig. The Count was engaged in some historical work and spent a lot of time shut up in his room. The Count treated the Countess with great gallantry, and she also showed him many courtesies. Shortly after, Doña Paca Falcón, who was a friend of Aviraneta and well- versed in the lives of everyone in Bayonne, told him that the Count of Hervilly was rumored to have met Sonia, his wife, in Paris, where she was living with a Cuban cigar maker, who passed himself off as her uncle; but who, it turns out, was actually her lover. The Count fell madly in love with her upon seeing her, and two days later he asked for her hand in marriage. She apparently replied, “You can consult my uncle about it.” The count went to see the tobacco maker, and the latter said to him in a markedly ill-humored tone: “This girl is not my niece, but my mistress. ” “So you have no authority or right over her? ” “I have none. ” “Very well.” The next day, Hervilly asked Sonia to marry him, and they were married. Shortly after, the count challenged the tobacco maker and shot him dead. The story seemed quite strange to Aviraneta. The countess had a servant, a very strange type. He was an American, a crossbreed of an Indian, dark, thin, sunburned, with an impassive and motionless face, very small feet and very small hands; a man who spoke Spanish, French, and English perfectly, but very languidly. His name was Fernandito. Aviraneta thought he must be Mexican and tried to question him and talk to him about his country; but Fernandito the Indian didn’t answer. This automaton seemed to have no life except in the presence of his masters. Falcón told Aviraneta that it was rumored that Sonia had found Fernandito one night on a Paris street, lying abandoned and gravely ill. Sonia apparently took him home, cared for him, and saved him, and from then on, the Indian had become a hound for that woman, for whom he had boundless enthusiasm. All these details did nothing to reassure or inspire confidence in those people. A few days later, Aviraneta saw the Countess of Hervilly with Mrs. Vargas in the dining room of the Fonda de Francia. He bowed ceremoniously, and they greeted him, smiling; but Don Eugenio was not entirely reassured. He already knew that Fermina believed she had reason to hate him; but the other woman, the Countess, what reason could she have against him? Chapter 10. THE EXPELLED. A few days after the Estella shootings , more than thirty of the leading figures in Don Carlos’s court, who belonged to the apostolic party, were expelled as schemers by Maroto. These individuals marched to France, escorted by a company from Alava, under the command of General Urbiztondo, who had Colonel Eguía and Lieutenant Colonel Errazquin as aides. Upon arriving in Vera, there were great discussions and protests among the exiles. Present there were Bishop Abarca with his secretary Pecondón; the guerrilla canon Don Juan Echevarría; Don José Arias Teijeiro; Generals Uranga, Mazarrasa, and García; Brigadier Valmaseda; Father Larraga; the physician Don Teodoro Gelos, Don Carlos’s surgeon; and Father Domingo de San José, preacher at the Royal Palace. Also present were Don Diego Miguel García, who had been General González Moreno’s confidant when the ambush was planned for Torrijos in Málaga, and Doña Jacinta Pérez de Soñanes, alias the Bishop. Upon setting foot on French soil, each of the exiles expressed their concerns. Arias Teijeiro, the Galician herbalist, was burning to take revenge on Maroto and planned to leave as soon as possible to join Cabrera in the Maestrazgo; Canon Don Juan Echevarría hoped to stir up the Navarrese troops against Maroto and seize power; Don Diego Miguel García was concerned only with his suitcases, full of money; Doña Jacinta was thinking of her beloved Bishop of León, who spoke of the pains of the Crucified One, undoubtedly considering his thick buttocks and pear-shaped abdomen to be semi-divine; Arias Teijeiro spoke to all his supporters, giving them instructions, and since Colonel Aguirre wanted to return to the Araquil Valley, where the troops he commanded were quartered, he urged him to abandon the project and enter France, otherwise he risked being shot by Maroto, reopening the case of the death of Brigadier Cabañas, in which Aguirre was implicated. Aguirre decided to go to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to await the announced uprising of the Apostolics, and the other figures headed to Saint-Jean-de-Luz, from where the French government sent them to various nearby points. Apparently, General Urbiztondo, upon reaching the border, He bid farewell to the Carlists with great indifference, which outraged the exiles, who loudly accused him of being a traitor. Don Antonio de Urbiztondo y Eguía, the native of San Sebastián, was not very clerical, and, despite being among the Carlist ranks, he was considered infected with liberalism and a Freemason. His ancestors, the Urbiztondos, from San Sebastián, had been revolutionaries and pro-French, to the point of working for the separation of Guipúzcoa from Spain and its incorporation into the French Republic during the First Revolution, for which they were condemned to severe penalties by a Spanish court martial. Don Antonio de Urbiztondo had the liberal yeast. It was said that in a town in Catalonia, where he commanded the Catalan troops as general, he housed some of his soldiers in a convent and planned to take the pipes and lead pots he found there to cast bullets. The military delegate for Don Carlos in the Principality, who was the Bishop of Mondoñedo, denied permission for either attempt, considering the attempt irreverent and sacrilegious. Urbiztondo, with great disdain, replied: “That was the only way to wage war; that if there were lead objects in the churches, he would seize them, even if the bishop were offended, and that he would take, with or without permission, even the Pope’s slippers, if they were made of lead.” These words produced astonishment and indignation in the Carlist party , which partly caused Urbiztondo to remain in the barracks for a long time, until Maroto, appointed commander-in-chief, brought him back to active service. Urbiztondo, by mistake, had been a Carlist. He was an intelligent soldier, a man of great nerve. He was one of the good generals of Carlism. Having transferred to the Queen’s army after the Convention of Vergara, he was captain-general of the Philippines, in whose command he was very successful. Later, he became Minister of War under Narváez in 1856, and the following year he died in a duel in a hall of the Royal Palace, over a matter of etiquette, fighting with an officer who had forbidden him entry. At least that was the popular opinion. “Probably ,” Urbiztondo told the exiles upon reaching the border, “I too will soon have to return to France.” “It’s quite possible,” replied Doña Jacinta de Soñanes, the Bishop, with a sarcastic tone, “but it won’t be for the same reason as us, nor by the same route. ” “If possible, let him leave through Behovia,” replied the general, without attaching any importance to the allusion. This happened at the beginning of March. Those expelled by Maroto had already arrived in Saint-Jean-de-Luz and Bayonne when one day Consul Gamboa called Don Eugenio de Aviraneta and said: “I very much wanted to speak with you, and I was thinking of calling you today. ” “What is it?” “The sub-prefect and I are still undecided, not knowing what to do with the Carlist figures expelled by Maroto. ” “Well, why? ” “The sub-prefect is of the opinion that these Carlists should be interned forty or fifty leagues from the border. I don’t know what to do. I’ve asked the government, but they haven’t answered. What do you think? ” “We should let them live on the border,” Don Eugenio replied. “Why intern them? Keeping an eye on a politician without having him locked up in jail is impossible. Besides, these emigrants, with their maneuvers, will be useful to us. ” “Do you think…? ” “Of course they are. They can’t do us any harm. ” “Do you suppose they’re conspiring? ” “They’re already conspiring. ” “Against whom? ” “Against whom it must be: against Maroto! ” “Do you suppose that’s in our best interest?” “Of course they are.” Today, Maroto is the only respectable force of Carlism. Removing that hotbed of discord from the border for the enemies would be sheer folly. –Yes. Perhaps you’re right. Do you think these people have a specific plan? –Yes; their purpose is to stir up the Navarrese battalions against Maroto. –Who’s leading them? –The main leader is Father Echevarría. –And do you think they will achieve their goal? –I think they will revolt sooner or later. –Their success would not be good for us. They would wage a cruel war again . –Bah! They will not succeed. They will only divide themselves. Gamboa understood that what Aviraneta was telling him was very logical and decided to tell the sub-prefect not to bother the exiles. This was the reason why the French authorities left the Bishop of León in Guethary; in Bayonne and its surroundings, Father Echevarría, Don Basilio, and other Carlist leaders ; and Colonel Aguirre in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port; all decisions that the Madrid newspapers commented on with their usual petulance and foolishness . Don Eugenio did not tell Gamboa that some of those Carlists were secretly working for him, and that Colonel Aguirre, commander of the Fifth Battalion of Navarre, an apostolic and intransigent fanatic, in whose battalion García Orejón, Luis Arreche Bertache, and many others served as officers, was being subsidized by the Queen’s Government to stir up the troops against Maroto. Chapter 11. THE GATHERING OF ABBÉ MIÑANO. At that time, one of the centers of those expelled by Maroto began to be the country house that Don Sebastián Miñano had on the outskirts of Bayonne. Miñano the elegant, the former Frenchified abbot, the former secretary of Marshal Soult, was a skeptic, a Voltairean, who believed in nothing; but like all skeptics, in his maturity he leaned toward despotism, considering it to be a more tranquil, more peaceful, and less turbulent way of life than the liberal regime. Miñano lived very comfortably and collected money from both sides, the Carlist and the Christian; for both, he was almost an oracle. The abbot protected his illegitimate son, Don Eugenio de Ochoa, who was living the life of a wealthy young man in France. Miñano’s house was of great interest to those Carlists, most of them barbaric and uncouth, who came from the countryside; there they conversed with elegant, perfumed French legitimists with mustaches full of cosmetics, with moderate Spaniards, with journalists, and even with distinguished ladies. Often they would go to greet Miñano; Valdés, the cat-wearing man, who in politics was also of the epicene genre; Salvador, the traitor to Isabelina and bitter enemy of Aviraneta; Martínez López, the pamphleteer, farmer, and grammarian; Don Vicente González Arnao and his secretary Pagés; Muñagorri, Consul Gamboa, and all the influential Spaniards who were in Bayonne. They frequently held Carlist meetings at the home of Miñano, Bishop Abarca, the priest Echevarría, Lamas Pardo, Don Basilio, the Labanderos, Doña Jacinta Soñanes, alias the Bishop, and others. Generally, they gave advance notice, discussions took place, and in the end, the abbot was almost always the one who decided the issues. The expelled men did not remember that Miñano was the author of the letters of the Poor Lazy Man, which did so much to discredit the clergy in Spain, and especially the friars, nor that he had been pro-French and liberal. The Bishop of León, Don Joaquín Abarca, who had his émigré residence in Guethary, was a fat, Aragonese, pedantic, and learned gentleman who considered himself a genius. He wore a habit with violet trim; He had as his secretary a schemer named Ramón Pecondón, and as his inspirer or Nymph Egeria was Doña Jacinta de Soñanes, alias the Bishop, who went out of her way to ensure that Her Grace did not lack hot chocolate or broth on time. The Bishop of León was very concerned about the course of events; he thought that his personal prestige in the Carlist camp had diminished and he attributed this to the machinations of Maroto, whom he hated evangelically. Abarca was very afraid of his secretary Pecondón and only dealt with some confidential matters when Pecondón was not present. The other cantertulio, Don Diego Miguel García, was a man of eyes. Deep-set eyes, thick eyebrows, a slanted gaze, and a thin, sarcastic smile. García was a man of blood and mud who had never thought of anything but gathering gold, no matter what the cost. He had long been a confidential agent of Ferdinand VII in his sinister intrigues with Regato, Salvador, and other such reptiles. García was the one who deceived Torrijos in Málaga, using a colonel who passed himself off as a liberal. The latter led the liberals to the beach and handed them over to General González Moreno. García was then, in the theocratic society, the Exterminating Angel. Labandero, the father, was a weak and mediocre man, who had no aggressiveness whatsoever, and who constantly complained about his illnesses and misfortunes. Father Echevarría, the former canon of Los Arcos, was a barbarian: strong, red-faced, robust, very corpulent, with athletic features. He was frequently seen passing through the streets of Bayonne wearing a black frock coat and a top hat like a tube. Father Echevarría seemed to be in full health; his puffy cheeks were the color of apples, and his eyes were black and bright. Father Echevarría was one of those types of simulated frankness, a common occurrence among the Aragonese and Navarrese of the Ribera region. All this supposed frankness consists of speaking in a rude tone; but it doesn’t go any further, because beneath the rude tone, people know how to employ scheming and perfidy like men from other regions and countries . Father Echevarría was stubborn and brutal with inferiors and a flatterer of the most groveling and subservient followers of Don Carlos. He had lived throughout the Civil War like a prince, always at banquets, parties, trips , and ceremonies. He was the agent of the Navarrese and addressed all the officers informally and treated the people with barbaric despotism. The priest Echevarría and Abarca, the Bishop of León, visited Don Sebastián Miñano several times and asked for his advice. At all costs, the two ecclesiastics wanted to stir up the Navarrese battalions against Maroto and establish a theocratic government in the Royal Palace; but they wanted to do so with the greatest possible guarantees. For these absolutist Catholics, the main issue in their party was loyalty to the King; they considered themselves servants of the Monarch and believed that being loyal to him was the best tribute to the cause. Being intelligent or capable was secondary to the two ecclesiastics. They were beginning to think that, victorious, Maroto would be little different from Espartero, and that it wasn’t worth waging war for a similar outcome. Miñano advised them to remain calm and find a good opportunity to intervene. The abbot, with his diplomacy and his gift of the gab, had become an oracle for the intransigent Carlists, as he was also for the moderate Christians. Strange thing. The former abbot, former prebendary of Seville, former secretary to Soult, former constitutionalist, former anticlerical, former journalist for El Censor, former geographer, had become a Protestant; he was a reader of Victor Hugo, Balzac, and Sainte Beuve, and was at that time translating Thiers’s History of the French Revolution for the printer Baroja in San Sebastián. The Marquis de la Lalande’s tertulia (group of socialists) operated in agreement with the apostolic and anti-Maroto center, sometimes in opposition, and sometimes in opposition. It was a tertulia of aristocrats, legitimists, and foreigners. The Count of Hervilly, Baron de Batz, Montgaillard, and the intendant Arizaga belonged to it. There were intelligent people among them, and their leader in the Carlist camp was the Prince of Licknowsky. This group drew up a compromise with Maroto’s approval. Lord John Hay was expected to give his consent to the plan; but in the end, and after much hesitation, the lord sailor did not. Chapter 12. FIRST EFFECTS OF SIMANCAS. In those circumstances, Aviraneta saw clearly that the strong nucleus of Carlism was in Maroto and his people. If Carlism was to be defeated, Maroto had to be attacked by all means. possible. It was time to introduce the Simancas, the set of forged documents fabricated by Aviraneta, into Don Carlos’s Realm. The task wasn’t easy; the Simancas had to be passed into the Pretender’s hands, as if it had come from the Carlist camp; without generating any distrust about its authenticity, legitimizing its origin. Who could carry the documents? A supporter of the Queen would be suspicious to the people of the Realm; a Carlist, won by money, would be very exposed. Only a French legitimist who had been in the pay of the government could carry out this dangerous mission with relative ease, which undoubtedly required courage and perspicacity. Aviraneta had met Frechón, Chipiteguy’s clerk, at the house in Reducto and had spoken with him at the Iturri inn. He thought that perhaps he could be of use. Don Eugenio called him, flattered him a little, listened to him attentively, and told him to come back; perhaps the two of them could make a good deal. “Would you dare go to Spain on a commission?” Aviraneta asked him. “No; I can’t go now. ” “Don’t you have a trustworthy acquaintance you could give him a difficult assignment for Spain? ” “A Frenchman? ” “Yes .” “I have a friend who might be useful. ” “Have you been to Spain? ” “Yes, many times. Now that you’ve worked for the Carlists. ” “Ah!
” “But it’s just as well for you to work for the Liberals. ” “And he speaks Spanish? ” “As well as you do. ” “Do you want to warn him? ” “Yes; but what do I gain by that? ” “Well, tell me what you want me to give him for the news. ” “Nothing; I’ll bring that friend tomorrow.” The next day Frechón appeared at the Hotel de Francia with his friend, Pablo Roquet. Roquet was a merchant who had had a commission house in Behovia; a man with a mysterious life, who spoke Spanish as well as French. Roquet presented himself as a friendly gentleman in his forties, dark-skinned, thin, with hair just beginning to turn white at the temples, dressed in black. Despite his relatively young appearance, he was over fifty. Don Eugenio summoned him for the next day; he tested him out and saw that he was a very capable and insinuating man. He took his information and learned that he had gone bankrupt several times, that he was a widower, and that he was living with a dressmaker. Doña Paca Falcón knew this couple. Roquet had something of a reptile about him, perhaps without much venom; he sought to enrich himself, if possible, without harming anyone. If someone was harmed, what could be done? The fool should be put to death. Aviraneta suggested to Roquet that he be the one in charge of introducing the set of forged documents, baptized with the name Simancas, into Don Carlos’s camp . Roquet was undoubtedly a very suitable person for such a task and immediately understood its importance. Roquet initially demanded a lot of money and somewhat insidiously threatened to expose the incident to the Carlists. Aviraneta thought he had made a false move and became alarmed. Inspired by a momentary inspiration, he went to visit a retired former police officer, Mr. Masson, who lived in a country house near Bayonne, and asked him for information about Roquet. Masson provided it and showed him a file he had on him. Pablo Roquet, known as Juan Filotier, alias La Ardilla, alias La Dulzura, had lived in Bordeaux under the name García and was known in Bayonne as Roquet. He was a skilled man, involved in difficult business dealings. He had lived on the fringes of the Penal Code until he fell into its trap. He had been prosecuted several times for fraud and spent a long time in prison. With this background, Aviraneta waited for Roquet at a steady pace, and they reached an understanding. When Roquet saw that Aviraneta knew his background, he calmed down. Aviraneta gave him what he could and promised him several things, some feasible and others imaginary. Roquet and Don Eugenio agreed on what would be said when Simancas was brought to the Real de Don Carlos. Aviraneta had invented a story. It went like this: A French legitimist of limited means, who lived in Bayonne and rented a study with his bedroom, had had a Spaniard as a guest who had a trunk and a suitcase as luggage. This Spaniard, after spending a month in the house, had to leave Bayonne hastily and without luggage; undoubtedly, someone was chasing him. The Spaniard recommended to the French legitimist who rented him the room to be careful with his trunk and suitcase. A few days later, the legitimist’s son, a boy of ten or twelve, was playing, found a key in a corner, tried to see if the key fit the trunk, opened it, and found inside some documents and a cardboard box. The boy looked at them and showed them to his father, who learned what they were. The legitimist, on the one hand, wanted what he had discovered by chance to be useful to Don Carlos; “But on the other hand, he didn’t want to appear as a man capable of breaching trust… ” “All right,” said Roquet upon hearing the explanation. Once the two had agreed, Don Eugenio wrote a note for Roquet to deliver to the leaders Lanz and Soroa, who had already been in contact with him and were members of the Apostolic Party. He told them the following in the note: There is an infernal plot against Don Carlos, of which Maroto is the leader. Maroto plans to permanently disable Charles V. This conspiracy is governed by a secret society established among the Marotist generals of the Royal Palace, and this society, with sinister aims, depends on another one based in Madrid, the Spanish Society of Jovellanos, which is in principle Masonic. The Society of Jovellanos and the Marotist Society of the Royal Palace communicate through a commissioner who lives in Bayonne. A large part of the documents that prove the conspiracy are in the possession of a French legitimist family, who live in the outskirts of Bayonne. The giver could obtain some of those papers. Aviraneta reasoned that for those intransigent fanatics, the existence of such a secret society wasn’t too difficult to believe, because they themselves had secret societies, veritable clubs, in which they conspired against Maroto. Roquet, well-instructed, went to Spain, and a few days later, upon his return, he met with Aviraneta. He had spoken with Soroa, with Aldave, who was the border chief, and with Lanz, and they said they needed proof of Maroto’s treason. Aviraneta drafted another explanation and attached to it three letters, which in Freemasonry jargon are called plates, in which Maroto appeared as none other than the Grand Orient, and a communication from the Spanish Society of Jovellanos, S. EBJ, signed by the General Directorate of Jovellanos, in which Maroto and the proposed compromise between moderate Christians and Carlists were clearly alluded to. The communiqué ended with these words: Health, Moderation, and Hope. Roquet went to Tolosa and met again with Soroa and other military men from the exalted faction, showing them the letters in which Maroto figured as the great leader of Freemasonry. The commotion that this caused was enormous. The Carlist military men held a grand council and appointed a commission to visit Don Carlos in Durango; but when they requested an audience with the King, the Marotists, who were constantly besieging him, succeeded in having it denied. The commission members returned to Tolosa, held another assembly, and at this meeting some officers proposed killing Maroto; but one of the young commanders, an Alava native, opposed it; he said no, that it was essential to first seize all the documents accusing Maroto that existed in France, and once they had them, arrest the general, bring him before a court martial, try him, and legally condemn him to death. The board agreed with this opinion, and as everyone was eager to have the accusatory documents against Maroto, they instructed Roquet to return to France and bring them. To facilitate his undertaking, they gave him an escort and a password for the Sara’s priest. Sara’s priest, a Carlist agent, upon learning of Roquet’s commission, welcomed him with great enthusiasm and gave him a letter directing him to visit the Bishop of León in Guethary. Roquet presented himself mysteriously to the bishop on June 9; he told him privately, without his secretary present, what had happened in Tolosa with the military and showed him the three Masonic letters in which Maroto appeared as the great leader of Freemasonry. Bishop Abarca was petrified and frightened; he hardly dared to touch those infernal papers; but, on the other hand, he was pleased that there was evidence to prove Maroto’s treason and crush him forever. “The matter is extremely important,” the bishop told Roquet. “I would like to have a conference with that Frenchman who possesses the documents, with that pure and noble soul that Divine Providence has arranged to be the instrument of salvation for Her Majesty’s precious life.” Saying this, the bishop clasped his crossed hands over his mouth and rolled his eyes. To the bishop’s expressed desire, Roquet responded by saying that the French legitimist who had the documents did not want to show his face because he was in dire financial straits and was seeking a position in Louis-Philippe’s government, and it was not in his interest to appear as a Carlist, much less as a man capable of breaching trust. What this Frenchman wanted was some monetary assistance. “He will have it. He will have it,” said the bishop. Immediately, Don Joaquín Abarca ordered lunch to be served to Roquet and himself, and then decided to go with the Frenchman to Bayonne to visit Miñano. On the way, the bishop spoke of those precious documents only. Upon arriving in Bayonne, he and Roquet went to the Seminary to look for Father Echevarría, who was housed in a cell. The day before, Aviraneta had sent Don Francisco Xavier Sánchez de Mendoza to Labandero’s house. Don Eugenio instructed the nobleman to say that information had been found about Maroto’s betrayal and convinced him to go to Labandero’s house, or if not, to Lamas Pardo’s, and tell any of them—without naming him, of course—that irrefutable evidence had been found that Maroto belonged to the Freemasonry, where he held a high position, and that he was planning a major betrayal. Sánchez de Mendoza was known among the Carlists as loyal to the cause and a man of good intentions, although fantastical and very gullible. Labandero, upon hearing Sánchez de Mendoza’s account, didn’t give much credence to the news; but, just in case, he notified Echevarría in case he wanted to go to his house. The three were talking when Roquet and the Bishop of León, coming from the Seminary, appeared. Upon seeing Simancas’s Masonic letters, Echevarría and Labandero were amazed. The next day, Sánchez de Mendoza called Don Eugenio and confidentially told him in detail what had happened. Apparently, when Bishop Abarca and Roquet arrived at Labandero’s house and showed the papers, they all decided to hold a meeting with Abbot Miñano. Echevarría notified Don Basilio García and Don Florencio Sanz; Labandero notified Lamas Pardo; Pecondón appeared with the Count of Hervilly, and they all, in various groups, went to Miñano’s house. Sánchez de Mendoza was greatly amazed to learn that the abbot worked for the Carlists and to see his luxurious house, his library full of rare books, paintings , and furniture. In Miñano’s office, behind closed doors and in the utmost secrecy, Roquet showed the three Masonic plates. They were passed from hand to hand and examined carefully. No one even considered the idea of a hoax or that it could be a falsehood. “What do we do?” asked the bishop. “We must communicate this to Don Carlos,” Miñano replied. “And as soon as possible,” Echevarría added. “Don’t you have an agent at the Royal Palace?” Miñano asked the bishop. “Yes: Enciso. ” “Then write to him so that he can facilitate Mr. Roquet’s passage to presence of Don Carlos. The Bishop of León was frightened and did not dare write the letter for fear of compromising himself. “Do you think it is necessary?” he asked Miñano several times. “Yes; I think it is indispensable.” Then the bishop wrote a short note, which read as follows: Señor Don Miguel Enciso: Please arrange for the giver to be able to speak with our principal on an important matter of trade.–_A._ At the end of the meeting, Sánchez de Mendoza said in a solemn and melodramatic tone: “Now, war to the death against Maroto. Down with the traitor! ” “Down!” they all replied coldly, thinking, no doubt, that it was inappropriate to shout in a secret meeting. After much speculation about the consequences that the discovery of the Masonic plates could have, the apostles, in groups, returned to Bayonne. The meetings at Miñano’s house eventually became a Carlist and apostolic junta, led by the Bishop of León, Echevarría, Friar Antonio de Casares y Labandero, with Sanz, the brother of the Navarrese general shot in Estella, acting as secretary. Maroto found out about this a month later and, in a published document, said: ” All the warnings and reports I receive through different channels indicate an impending revolution in the army and the provinces, which appears to be being fomented more particularly by Friar Antonio Casares, a paid Capuchin who served as chaplain in the 5th battalion of Navarre; by the reverend Bishop of León and by the officer who had been the Secretary of War, Don Florencio Sanz, currently secretary of a committee formed in Bayonne, composed of those expelled, and with the consent of the consul in that place, by the usurping and revolutionary government, in which the immoral Abbot Miñano and others infected with the same doctrines also played their part . Maroto was mistaken about Miñano; for the Abbot was not infected with any doctrine; rather, he had managed to cleanse himself of all of them. The following day, Roquet and Don Eugenio had a long conference at Iturri’s house; they agreed on the smallest details, and shortly afterward Roquet left for Spain. The Bishop of León told the agent that if he saw Don Carlos, he should tell him that he, Abarca, guaranteed the truth of the existence of Maroto’s Masonic letters . Two days later, the Frenchman was in Tolosa; He would see Don Miguel Enciso, give him the letter from the Bishop of León, and then together Enciso and Roquet would order Colonel Soroa to present the pretender with the Masonic letters and the message from the Bishop of León. Soroa and Roquet went to Oñate and Roquet was introduced to the intendant general, Don Juan José Marcó del Pont, who a few days later left his post as intendant to become Minister of Finance. Marcó del Pont was a rabid enemy of Maroto and an unmasked enemy. A few days earlier, Espartero had sent Maroto a newspaper from Madrid containing a copy of the intercepted letters sent by Arias Teijeiro from the Cabrera camp to Don Carlos, letters addressed under an envelope to Marcó del Pont and in which Maroto was insulted and made a mockery of. Maroto was ready to catch Marcó del Pont and shoot him. Marcó knew this and his hatred grew with fear. Marcó del Pont learned of the matter of the Masonic letters and brought Soroa and Roquet before Don Carlos. The Pretender examined the three Masonic letters; he read them, reflected, and said, hiding the deep impression they made on him—his only talent was this: dissimulation: “This, in the end, is not very important. I already knew that there were some Masons among my generals. ” “Sir,” replied Soroa, turning red with indignation, with the violence of a fanatical Basque, “The generals who are in the Carlist army and belong to the Freemasonry can only be traitors. ” “Yes, I also believe so,” said Don Carlos. Roquet remained silent. “And the other papers?” asked the Pretender. “The other papers belong to that Legitimist gentleman in Bayonne,” Roquet replied. “Have you seen them? ” “Yes. ” “What are they? ” “There is a large sheet of paper with this title: Synoptic table of the triangle of northern Spain.” On it are many ovals resembling lenses, painted green and red. ” “Are there names? ” “No; in the center of each oval is a number. On the green side there is a sign that says: Civilians. And on the red side it reads: Military. Above the sheet, at the top, are many numbers and hieroglyphics that we have not been able to decipher. There is also a small cardboard box with a sphere, with the name: Sphere of Light filled with signs similar to those on these letters. ” “And how did all this get to Bayonne?” Don Carlos asked. “This legitimist who wishes to present these papers is a man in poor circumstances who usually rents a study with his bedroom. A Spaniard came to this study with his luggage and stayed for several days; but it seems someone was chasing him, or he was sent some urgent errand, because he had to escape and recommended to the legitimist owner of the house that he take care of his trunk.” At this point, the legitimist’s son, a boy of twelve or thirteen , opens the trunk out of curiosity, finds the painted sheet and the sphere of light, and, believing them to be toys, shows them to his father. “And wouldn’t this French legitimist gentleman come here himself with his documents?” asked the Pretender. “He doesn’t want to, because it wouldn’t be in his interest for his name to be known,” replied Roquet. “He’s making arrangements to secure a position with the French government, and if it were known that he had violated a secret, he would receive a very bad reputation.” “I would give him a cross or a title if he would provide me with those papers,” said the Pretender. “He is in no position to desire distinctions. He wishes nothing more than to render this service to Her Majesty’s cause, so that you may see who is surrounding him.” He would leave the papers for fifteen days for a careful examination, on his word of honor that they would be returned to him, and he would ask for three thousand francs for this. “Well, then, they shall be given to him,” said the Pretender. From what Roquet had heard, both Don Carlos and Marcó del Pont were anxious and suspicious, and at the same time very pleased with the prospect of tripping Maroto up and finishing him off once and for all. The King and the minister talked for a long time, withdrawn to one side of the room. Don Carlos considered writing an order to the governor of Vera to provide and escort the person carrying the documents when he presented himself at the frontier; But, as he went to write the note, Marcó del Pont said that he himself would accompany Roquet to Vera and tell the commandant of this border town, Colonel Lanz, that when Roquet returned to Bayonne he should be escorted to the Real. The Frenchman promised to take the documents, and Marcó del Pont assured him that, after verifying their authenticity and importance, he would give him three thousand francs for the legitimist and another three thousand as a guarantee that all the papers would be returned to him. Chapter 13. MONEY. While Aviraneta anxiously awaited the results of Roquet’s efforts, much news spread through Bayonne. It was said that the anti-Marotists of the Apostolic Junta were going to have money to intensify the war. The secretary of the Junta, Don Florencio Sanz, became agitated and issued circulars, affirming the return to power of the _puros_. It was added that Father Larraga had gone to Turin and General Uranga to Vienna; that the two would bring provisions and money in abundance, and that the Apostolic Council would immediately go to reach an agreement with Cabrera and Arias Teijeiro. A few days later, the _Faro de Bayona_ confirmed the news and added that Tarragual had requested passage from the sub-prefect to go to Toulouse and then to the Catalan border. Aviraneta knew all this was of no importance; however, during those days, he learned of some important news from the Azpeitia Anti-Marotist Club . It involved a loan of five hundred million reales to Don Carlos for the Tastet and Francessin houses. Tastet had gone to Don Carlos’s Royal Palace with a letter from England’s leading bankers offering the Pretender aid if he agreed to sign the contract under the proposed conditions. The deal was a combination of English and French merchants, aimed at ruining the meager Spanish industry. Tastet went to the Royal Headquarters and first met with Father Cirilo de la Alameda, who wanted to get a slice of the bargain without exposing himself; but Tastet was as cunning as Father Cirilo could be and was prepared not to give a penny without guarantees. Aviraneta feared that, despite the harsh conditions, Don Carlos, driven by necessity, would sign the loan so he could have weapons, horses, war supplies, and money to pay the troops. Marshal Trivulzi’s well-known phrase, which has been repeated many times, is: Three things are necessary to wage a war well: first, money; second, money; and third, money. To this can be added Vespasian’s phrase, that money has no smell; that is, it makes no difference whether it comes from above or below; from flowers or from mud. Aviraneta, who saw great danger in this loan, began to work against it. He gave information to the anti-Marotists of Fermín Tastet, a Bilbao banker who had been a liberal and a Freemason; He had the Clubs of Tolosa, Azpeitia, and Bayonne say that the loan was a perfidious plot by Maroto to exterminate the pure Carlists and the Pretender, since, by paying them lavishly, the general, master of the troops in this way, would do whatever he wanted, compromising with Espartero, sacrificing the cause of legitimacy and Catholicism. This was the explanation why it was liberals and Masons who were offering the money. The idea flattered the fanatics; they appropriated it, and such was the enmity that arose against this loan that Tastet had to escape from Real and run to France. The two bankers, the Spanish and the French, expressed astonishment at the enmity his project had generated. They spoke in Bayonne with the Marquis de Lalande, and one of the bankers said: “Without money, the war will soon be over.” The Marquis de Lalande seems to have added: “We don’t have a war for more than a few months.” PART THREE THE WAX FIGURES Chapter 14. HISTORICAL FIGURES. Alberto Dollfus, alias Chipiteguy, had a mania for acquiring everything. “The point is to store, to put things in the store,” he said. ” There are always people who want to buy.” The system must not have been entirely bad, because apparently, and thanks to it, the scrap dealer became rich. A little before Alvarito Sánchez de Mendoza entered Chipiteguy’s house, the rag-and-bone man had bought several scrap wax figures that were being sold by a Mr. David, Curtius for the respectable public, owner of a cabinet of wax figures that had passed through Bayonne. These figures, Mr. David, alias Curtius, sold most of them naked, as if they were odalisques, for a harem, and others in separate pieces, heads, legs, arms, as if it were a kind of butcher shop. Most of the ceraplast figures had only the torso, part of the chest, hands and feet. Chipiteguy decided to dedicate himself to surgical ceraplasty; he thought first of restoring his figures and fortified some of them, inserting a stick through the leg to act as a tibia, stuffing arms and thighs with corn straw. Then, with melted wax, he covered the hollows of the faces and hands and, once this restoration was done, he painted the cheeks with white lead and vermillion. Chipiteguy, who kept many costumes of women and uniforms of all kinds, he thought that both would serve very well to dress his figures, and he brought out of his warehouses jackets, coats, breeches, blue tailcoats, petticoats, scarves, combs, and the like. Andre Mari and Tomascha had to mend many stockings and lace during those days. Mr. David had gotten rid of his dolls because, besides being a little worn, they were well known to his numerous customers, and the good Curtius, jealous of the interest of his show, wanted to replace his old characters with new ones of soldiers, assassins, and poisoners of greater prestige and fame. Some of the wax figures bought by Chipiteguy were identified; but others were not. Mr. David, Curtius in public life, had probably passed one of his dolls off as Henry IV, at other times as the great Frederick, as Mohammed, or as General Poniatowski, and there was a wax lady who had alternately been Marie-Christina, one of the figures of the French Revolution and England, and the mistress of Fieschi, the man with the infernal machine; not to mention other ancient avatars, discrediting ceraplasty and iconography . Chipiteguy asked Alvarito to look through the illustrated newspapers and the prints in the back room in his spare time to try to identify the ambiguous and blurred characters. Alvarito spent several days flipping through pages and getting dusty, but he didn’t achieve much. Among the prints Chipiteguy kept were rare prints, old German engravings by Albrecht Dürer, and reproductions of paintings by Bosch, Holbein, and Cranach. These plates were mixed with others torn from books and popular prints from the Dances of Death, the Story of the Four Sons of Aymón, Genevieve of Brabant, the Four Hunchbacks of Valladolid, and portraits and scenes of figures from the French Revolution and the Empire. Chipiteguy also contributed the knowledge of his nephew, Marcelo Ezponda, an engineer and professor at an academy, although he primarily focused on chemistry and mechanics. “Let’s see if you, Marcelo, can enlighten me on this matter,” Chipiteguy told him. “What should I do? ” “I would like to identify all these wax figures,” the old man indicated, pointing to the row of sinister figures, some almost intact, propped against the wall, and others in pieces on the floor, as if in a Spoliarium. “Dear uncle,” said Marcello, “this is more difficult than it seems at first glance, because there are types, of course, who can be identified by their face alone; but many others, the majority, are known by their accessories, their hairstyle, their uniform, or their clothing. It is so true that men, in general, have so little character that if you strip the most illustrious and best-drawn of their historical accessories, their mustaches and sideburns, their braids and plumes, a few phrases, and a couple of anecdotes, not even their father would recognize them. The uncle, the nephew, and Alvarito speculated about who these people might be, and they came to identify Marie Antoinette, Brinvilliers, Mirabeau, Robespierre, Marat, Fouché, Fualdés, Paganini, Danton, Fieschi with his mistress, Madame Roland, and Robinson Crusoe. Some were not very certain; Others, for example, like Marat, his naked body curled up as if ready to be put in a bathtub, with a wound in his chest and a handkerchief tied around his head, were unmistakable. The other figures remained unidentified. Some were understood to be male, others female; there were also those with an ambiguous air. Chipiteguy and Marcelo gave the unidentified figures nicknames: the Englishman, the Diplomat, the Spanish Woman. They called one the Pretty Lady. “This rogue has a funny air,” said Chipiteguy. “She’s some lady of the old regime. With her rosy face and blue eyes, I’m Seeing her laughing at her husband and her suitors, Alvarito found her somewhat distant resemblance to Manón. Chipiteguy was not daunted by the difficulty of identifying his ambiguous and blurred figures and, with Alvarito’s help, decided who this one and that one should be. After his decision, feeling as much like Curtius as Señor David, he gave the characters wigs and sideburns, glued or held in place with studs. He gave them tricorn hats and helmets and transformed them into famous generals of the Carlist War. The insults against ceroplasty were continuous. In Bayonne, and at that time, this Carlist disguise of the characters was what could have the most interest for the respectable public. In addition to the separate figures, there was a group of three men who, by their attitude, were murdering another; but the dead man was missing. These three came dressed. One of the murderers, a young man with crooked eyes, a thick-lipped mouth, a flat nose, a cap on his head, and a red scarf around his neck, raised his arm, armed with a dagger. The other, older, stocky, strong, with an intelligent and lively gaze, had a knife half-hidden in his hand. The third, a witness, connected to the two murderers by fate and by some wooden slats, was a man who was screaming for help and opening his mouth wide, showing his teeth and gums. This man, who must have been an honest man, had gray hair, a deeply wrinkled face, glasses, a coat, and a cane in his hand. Despite his supposed honesty, he was almost more unpleasant than the criminals attached to him. Chipiteguy thought they could call the young man the Murderer, the other the Gibbet Man, and the old man who was shouting the Newsboy. All the wax figures had that horrible, ugly, somewhat ghostly look of waxworks. It was a strange carnival of motionless, expressionless figures, although some had a sort of expressive and mannered commonality. There were some figures with an air of pedantry and discretion, who seemed to be saying, “Ah, don’t believe it; we also keep our secret.” When they were dressed, the figures were pushed up against the wall of the warehouse. Manón, seeing them, felt repugnant to those hypocritical and pedantic figures and exclaimed, “What disgusting fellows!” Then she asked her grandfather for permission to smash them with stones. “Man, man! What a girl! You’re an iconoclast. Leave them. After all, you won’t have to marry any of them,” said Chipiteguy, “and you’ll see how each one brings us his little money.” Most of the characters were transformed into soldiers and guerrillas of the Carlist War, except for the group of assassins. Those men had such a repugnant and vile air that they couldn’t be transformed into guerrillas. Nor could they be transformed into counterfeit purses. The most they could have been transformed into was executioners. What crime had they committed? Chipiteguy didn’t know. His nephew Marcelo said that perhaps the crime could be determined by reading the famous cases and trials; but Chipiteguy thought that, after all, it wasn’t worth the effort. Those three sinister characters, united by fate and by the ribbons at their feet, weren’t easy to separate either. Chipiteguy thought he should keep the group hidden until he found a wax figure who bore some resemblance to the dead. These three horrible figures ended up in the cave, wrapped in sackcloth . Alvarito was horrified to remember them. Why didn’t they seem to him like puppets armed with sticks and filled with corn husks, as they were? Why didn’t he take them for dolls or mannequins dressed in pawnshop clothes? He didn’t know why, but they had an effect on him. It certainly wasn’t entirely strange, because the neighborhood madman, whom they called Haddock, upon seeing the dolls, shuddered, had a fit, and began to scream like a madman. It was clear that these sinister figures worked on people with weak imaginations, disturbing them. Ceroplasty had an effect undoubtedly in the nervous system. One day Chipiteguy said to Alvarito: “We have to give Citizen Marat a bigger wound. Take this knife and heat it on the fire in the kitchen.” Alvarito did as he was told. “Now,” the old man said, “stick it into Citizen Marat’s chest. ” “Me? ” “Yes. What, are you afraid? ” “No, no. Why would I be afraid? ” “Carefully.” Alvarito took the hot knife and plunged it into the great revolutionary’s chest. The wax squeaked and a horrible wound remained, which he then painted vermilion. Chipiteguy had no good idea. He was looking for the impressive, the sensational. He decided to put a mask over one of the female figures’ faces, which made her look even more sinister. When he finished arranging his figures, Chipiteguy built a hut in the plaza of the Puerta de España, where the soldiers used to play music. Its installation was a success. For a long time, people came in the afternoon to see Chipiteguy’s figures. The hut didn’t have daylight, but was lit by kerosene lamps. This gave the place a mysterious and sinister cave-like feel. A young woman dressed in sequins would usually stand at the entrance collecting the fees, and inside, there was a French ex-Carlist who would explain the life and adventures of each character in great detail. At that time, the silhouettes and types of the liberal and Carlist Spanish generals were not exactly known, at least in France, and Paganini, Fieschi, and Robespierre, more or less, could indifferently pass for Cabrera, Zurbano, or Zumalacárregui… One afternoon, shortly after the inauguration of Chipiteguy’s barracks, installed near the Puerta de España, two elegant young men were chatting with Don Eugenio de Aviraneta while they contemplated the wax figures. One of the young men was a painter, who dressed like a dandy, in a blue tailcoat, trousers with belt loops, and long hair; the other was Ochoa, the writer. “Listen, Don Eugenio,” Ochoa said to Aviraneta, “how much truth is there in these portraits?” Aviraneta smiled; he was a friend of Chipiteguy. “They’re not bad,” he said. “It’s curious,” exclaimed the painter. Wax figures are more picturesque and more typical the more damaged and old they are. “Oh, of course! It’s not a work of art,” Aviraneta pointed out. “Undoubtedly,” the painter said petulantly, “wax figures are something attractive, especially for children and the townspeople. It’s a spectacle of great curiosity, exciting… ” “But at the same time, it’s strangely repulsive,” Aviraneta pointed out. “That’s true,” Ochoa added. “This curiosity and this attraction are unhealthy. All of this has the suggestion of something forbidden and pornographic; something of the restlessness produced by the mask, and at the same time, that evil, vile, hysterical undercurrent that is revealed in the curiosity about the dead, about dissection rooms, anatomical cabinets, and operations. ” Alvarito began to listen to the conversation of the three gentlemen, because it interested him. “Does it disgust you?” the painter asked. “It rather inspires laughter to me . ” “A wax-figure barracks seems like a mock morgue to me,” Aviraneta murmured. “Yes, yes, you’re right,” said Ochoa. “It seems the same to me, and I think the main reason for this is that everything about those figures has a death-like quality. ” “Well, to me, it all makes me laugh,” the painter insisted. “That general with his tricorn hat and saber is the most grotesque thing imaginable. ” “Real generals are more grotesque,” Aviraneta affirmed. “I think that in an exhibition like this, the memory of death is what prevails,” Ochoa continued. “The color of the wax is the color of a dead person, and, combined with the repugnance produced by the glass eyes, the false hair and the costumes emphasize this impression even more. ” “Look at that nun,” the artist pointed out. “She’s sinister, huh?” “He looks like a ghost,” said Aviraneta. “Yes, it’s horrible. How can anyone find that beautiful?” asked the painter. “There are people for whom the horrible is beautiful,” replied Ochoa. “Bah!” exclaimed the painter. “Wasn’t it also for Shakespeare? ” “I haven’t read Shakespeare,” replied the artist, “as if this were a sign of superiority. ” “A Frenchman, why would he read anything foreign?” exclaimed Aviraneta. “They have everything at home. ” “That’s true,” replied the artist, without noticing Don Eugenio’s irony. Alvarito listened attentively. He not only had not read, but had never even heard of Shakespeare. “The idea of death and the grave are emphasized in everything,” insisted Ochoa; “wax has something of flesh, but dead flesh; glassy eyes made of crystal are the eyes of a corpse; Hair, when removed from the person, is one of the things that most reminds us of the dead. Clothes, especially those worn, speak of a deceased person: they are like witnesses to all the good and evil a real man has done in life, because it’s not very likely that the tailor made them for dolls. Everything that comes together in wax figures is funerary and sepulchral. “Like you, dear Ochoa,” the painter interjected, “who are also funerary and sepulchral. ” “Size may also have an influence,” Aviraneta added. “If the figures were larger or smaller than life, they probably wouldn’t give such an impression of dead things; but those worn overcoats, those caps, those hats, which have surely been worn by living people, suggest to us a little of the idea of the deceased. ” “How macabre you look!” the painter exclaimed. “No, macabre, no. We’ll insist a little to clarify,” Ochoa replied. You’re undoubtedly right, Don Eugenio. Size has a lot to do with it. It’s that of life; therefore, that of the dead person. Enlarging or shrinking it would probably be enough to remove that impression. A doll never gives that unpleasant sensation because there’s no possibility of confusing it with a person. Why is the possibility of confusion so unpleasant? “It’s the possibility of the ghost, the specter,” said Aviraneta. ” A ghost like a fly or a mountain couldn’t be a frightening ghost. ” “Then there’s the other point,” Ochoa insisted. “Why doesn’t a figure as realistic as a wax figure produce an artistic effect? Undoubtedly, all these combined impressions of curiosity and repulsion that we’ve spoken about hinder the production of a sensation of softness and sweetness. Why are the murderer with a dagger in his hand and the victim with a wound from which blood flows odious to us in wax figures and not in a painting?” “To resolve that question would be to find the limit of art,” said Aviraneta, “it would be to know where its limits are. ” “That’s true,” added Ochoa. “We don’t know what the limits of art are. Why is blond or black hair painted on canvas fine, but a blond or brunette wig on a wax figure repugnant? Why are Murillo’s mangy creatures in his painting of Saint Elizabeth even beautiful, but a mangy creature in a wax figure would be even more unpleasant than in reality? ” “Undoubtedly, reality, and the man within it, is like a monster full of tentacles,” observed Aviraneta, “and some of these live on air and light, and others, on blood and mud; art takes advantage of them, but it can’t take advantage of all of them. ” “And wax figures take those muddy tentacles from reality, the ones most deeply embedded in the human clay,” added Ochoa. “There’s no doubt about it,” said Aviraneta. “What amazes me,” added Ochoa, “is why this art of wax figures, when it reaches the highest perfection, does not attain beauty . You will have seen the wax figure of the great Frederick at Potsdam Castle . ” “No, I don’t,” said Aviraneta. “Nor I,” replied the painter. “Everyone claims it is an absolute resemblance. The features of the King of Prussia are cast into the face of the dead man; the one who painted the face He knew the great Federico, and his parchment-like cheeks and purple-ringed eyes are completely true. The costume and accessories are the same ones the king wore: the tow wig, the faded, threadbare blue uniform; the boots, hat, sword, and flute are the ones he used. It’s almost reality… without the spirit. “And what effect does it have?” asked Aviraneta. “Just like these wax figures. It’s repugnant and frightening,” replied Ochoa. Perhaps the comments, which Alvarito listened to with great interest, were about to continue when Chipiteguy appeared and greeted Aviraneta affectionately. “Who is this guy?” the painter asked Ochoa. “The old man? He’s the owner of the wax figures. ” “No; the other one. ” Ochoa explained who the conspirator was, and the artist contemplated Aviraneta. “He’s a curious fellow,” he murmured; “he has a nice head. ” “Yes, he’s a bit like an eagle or a vulture.” Alvarito listened attentively to the theories about ceroplasty that the three gentlemen presented and thought about them. He agreed with many things. Chapter 15. ALVARITO’S DREAMS. While the wax figures were locked in the warehouse , they constituted an obsession for Alvarito. They filled him with fear, horror, and repugnance, and he didn’t want to go near them. At night, especially, the thought of the basement made him shudder. It was a den of madness, full of gesticulating monsters, horrifying specters, who threatened each other in a terrible silence. Alvarito feared that he would spend his entire life like this, with the prospect of a black basement with wax figures. When they began to take them to the shack, he thought he would feel at ease; but the group of murderers remained in the cave, and they were the ones that most repulsed and worried him. Alvarito was very nervous. He had always lived excited by his father’s political fantasies and his mother’s superstitious and fateful ideas . At first, at Chipiteguy’s house, with good food, he had managed to strengthen himself physically and mentally; but those cursed wax figures obsessed him and robbed him of all peace of mind. They constantly appeared to him in his dreams. He once dreamed that Chipiteguy’s house was haunted by a mysterious and strange curse. In the basement there were gesticulating monsters, hideous shadows that moved in the silence; on the upper floor there was a fairy and an old magician, and all around an atmosphere of madness and extravagance. When one entered the house, one would faint to such an extent that in a few minutes one would be anemic and bloodless, and at the end one would be transformed into a wax figure. Suddenly, a woman who spoke to him, whom he knew, although at the moment he didn’t know who she was, whispered to him the important secret. To avoid being enchanted in that house, it was necessary not to touch the ground. It was through contact with the ground that one lost strength. Then Alvarito came up with the idea of taking one of those cranes that were erected on the riverbank and placing it near the Redoubt, and lowering himself down by the rope and entering Chipiteguy’s house. Alvarito carried out his project with great ease; he would descend the rope and, swinging from it, walk around the house without touching the ground, and everything he touched with a wand would instantly disenchant him. Suddenly , he realized there were places he couldn’t reach, and then he would abandon the crane and, in an instant, construct some high, hollow-soled shoes and begin to walk around the house, gliding with great ease. But he would come across a closed door, and this was his despair, because he couldn’t disenchant a hidden person, in whom he had a great interest, and, despite his great interest, he didn’t know who it was. All his attempts were unsuccessful. Whenever he pushed the locked door and tried to open it, he lost his strength. He didn’t know why, until he looked through a small window and saw a crowd of wax figures holding the door open from the inside. That dream was complicated by another similar one. In the second dream, he entered through a wide doorway, climbed a staircase, and passed into a church bell tower, crowded with people, with large beams on the ceiling, from which hung a large number of chandeliers, ascending and descending, performing gymnastics on their silver threads. The people were strange and absurd; there was a small, dark-skinned man with a black mustache, dressed as a woman, who strode a lot as he walked and looked very petulant; a plump man with a face blackened with coal, who resembled Claquemain; and a tall, withered, skeletal woman with a cold gaze, blond hair, and in military uniform. There were children on the floor between the chairs, round and white like rubber balls, similar to those in the painting of the Massacre of the Innocents in the living room of Chipiteguy’s house. Among those strange people, a figure, covered with a mask, stared at him fixedly, making him shudder. Suddenly, an argument would break out between two thin, small, pockmarked priests, who were saying something terrible to the dark-skinned man with a mustache, dressed as a woman. Then, in the midst of the argument, a man wearing glasses, a wig, and a gray overcoat would appear, open his mouth, and seem to scream, but Alvarito couldn’t hear him. The newsboy was the figure on the wax figures of the group of assassins. Alvarito despaired at the sight of him and woke up in his despair. Many other dreams brought back memories of those cursed wax figures to the boy. Once, while passing by the banks of the Adour, he saw the Assassin emerge from the woods, approaching him with his arm raised , brandishing his dagger. Alvarito was predisposed to believe in ghosts and apparitions. Nevertheless, he told himself: “A wax figure can’t have a soul. I’m a visionary.” And this thought, in part, reassured him, though not always. He also thought that mannequins, automatons, puppets, and dolls all reflect the personality of their maker, sometimes even having a voice, like the scarecrows of Tonkin, which, with a broken bottle and a piece of string, rattle and creak and frighten the sparrows. In an old book bound in parchment that Chipiteguy had, an ancient treatise on superstitions, Alvarito read that dreams are of four kinds: divine, natural, moral, and diabolical. Natural dreams come from a person’s temperament. Bilious dreams dream of yellow colors, quarrels, disputes, battles , and fires; sanguine dreams of saffron, gardens, feasts, dances, love, and amusements; melancholic dreams of smoke, darkness, gloom, nocturnal walks, ghosts, sad things, and death; The snoring ones, with the sea, rivers, voyages, shipwrecks, heavy objects, and obstacles to travel. Alvarito, upon reading this, thought that perhaps he was primarily snoring, with a touch of biliousness, another touch of melancholy, and a touch of sanguine. Later, he realized that all this was nothing more than talking and saying nothing. One day, he dreamed that he was riding on horseback across a large bridge that extended into the sea. On either side, the waves churned, and the foam boiled in veritable chaos. These waves sometimes had vague human shapes and rose sternly to say something to him. “What’s going on? What do they want from me?” he wondered. The waves never began to speak, and the only thing Alvarito deduced from this dream, thinking about so much water, was that he must be very snoring. Another time he dreamed he was standing in front of a row of wax figures, and in the middle was a dandy, with long hair and a blue tailcoat, who reproduced the features of Ochoa’s painter friend who had been in the booth on the day of the inauguration and who was singing a romantic song, playing his lyre. Alvarito didn’t hear what he was singing; but the author, more accustomed to understanding wax figures, suspects that the long-haired man was playing his lyre the famous song from the _Ceroplastia or Ballad of the Wax Figures_, composed by the poet Julius Petrus Guzenhausen of Aschaffenburg, which goes like this: Chapter 16. THE SONG OF CEROPLASTY. Sometimes, in the still, lonely night, when Jupiter shines brightly above the chimneys of the houses, and the moon stands out like a musical note on the staff of the telegraph wires, when the lights of the fair are extinguished, a mysterious voice is heard at the door of the wax-figure booths, singing sobbingly: “Ceroplasty! Ceroplasty! You are not a triumphant art. Your children, it is true, have eyes and hands and feet, like the children of men, and suits and hats and shoes, and no one prevents them from wearing underpants and even leggings; but your children do not achieve the esteem of the intelligent or the aesthetes. They are not installed in palaces or museums, like the dolls of Greek art, although these are found barefoot and shirtless; they are not admired; They are relegated to the barracks outside the city, like those attacked by the plague or miserable beggars. Your offspring, Madame Ceroplastia, have never been in the pompous rotunda, nor in the loggia, nor in the colonnade, nor in the portico where the petulant children of marble show off in a mannered and slightly uncomfortable posture; nor in the fountain, nor in the square; they have not seen the caravans of tourists with the Baedeker in their hands, gazing at them with an admiration pre-booked by the Cook Agency; nor the group of ugly English spinsters in ecstasy showing their yellow horse teeth. The children of wax know no other praise than that of the scullery maid and the soldier. Plebeian, all plebeian. “Ceroplastia! Ceroplastia! You are not a triumphant art. No, no.” You lack eulogistic adjectives, children of wax. Where is the phrase of Goethe or of the Viscount of Chateaubriand, or at least of the Viscount of Arlincourt, in your praise? No one has sung your praises, neither in verse nor in prose. It is only said that a saint of communism, Stephen Cabet, an apparently unaesthetic individual, spoke of testing his Icaria, his utopian and perfect city, with wax figures of illustrious men; but it is added that the world cynically laughed at Icaria and at the wax figures. Utopia, all utopia. “Ceroplasty! Ceroplasty! You are not a triumphant art. Your detractors say that you are like the pool where the living waters that come from the mountain rot; that wax, when it comes from the hive, is beautiful, becomes repulsive in your figures, and that the same happens with glass and fabrics; They add that you cheapen all your materials instead of sublimating them; that your factors are good and your products are bad. Industrialism, all industrialism. –Ceroplasty! Ceroplasty! You are not a triumphant art. Your figures, of a somewhat repugnant discretion, produce, in most people, unease and annoyance; they remind them, it seems, of wax-covered mummies, church images with hair , false teeth, anatomical specimens, orthopedic shop windows, sample heads in hairdressing salons , tailors’ and hairdressers’ dummies, phrenologists’ busts … all things from the long chapter of unpleasant inventions, farces and lies. Mendacity, all mendacity. –Ceroplasty! Ceroplasty! You are not a triumphant art. Your composition, children of wax, does not allow you to live in the midst of nature. The rain and the sun would ruin your physique. Your wigs and uniforms, your pompoms and plumes, your jackets and coats, your breeches, sabers, and swords; your blunderbusses and old pistols, your fans and snuffboxes, your handkerchiefs and lace, speak to people, more than of Versailles or Sans Souci, of pawn shops, ragpickers, and second-hand dealers. Wardrobe, all wardrobe. “Ceroplasty! Ceroplasty! You are not a triumphant art. The aesthetes and the cultured consider you a macabre and funerary art . You remind people, according to them, of funeral pageants, of the primped ladies one sees on modern tombs sculpted by a stonemason.” in a marble that looks like sugar; the little gilt and silver angels on the coffins, the paintings of the hair of dead ancestors, the yellowish, somewhat unpleasant relics, and the votive offerings in the chapels, where wax arms and legs mingle with ostrich eggs. Funeral, all funerary. “Ceroplasty! Ceroplasty! You are not a triumphant art. And yet, yet… how you seduced us when we were children! If they can object to you from an aesthetic point of view, they won’t be able to do the same thinking about morality. Your thieves don’t steal, your murderers don’t kill, your magistrates don’t give unjust sentences, your generals are modest and silent. Should anything more be asked? The children of wax might say: Why such contempt? Didn’t we copy the dermatological skeleton of man with its appropriate clothing? If we cannot represent the interior of people, what is this impotence but a success? Is there anything more tortuous, more black, more convoluted, more full of cobwebs than these inner chambers of the human spirit, without ventilation and without light? Let the assassin be an arm with a dagger raised in the air; let the magistrate or the professor be a ball in the shape of a head or a pumpkin, with a pompom-shaped mortarboard; let the general be nothing more than a stake with a beautiful tricorn hat, with his feather duster, and you will win… What else? The cultured are not convinced. They live in complete aesthetic routine, they sleep in the company of the commonplace. They think of the Venus de Milo and the Apollo Belvedere, of Michelangelo’s Moses and Donatello’s condottiero, and even the name Ceroplasty, oh pain!, seems ridiculous to them. Affection, all affectation. Vanity, all vanity. –Ceroplasty! Ceroplasty! You are not a triumphant art. This is the mysterious voice that is heard on the quiet, solitary night at the door of the wax-figure booths, when the lights of the fair are extinguished, when Jupiter shines brightly above the chimneys of the houses and the moon stands out like a musical note on the staff of the telegraph wires. Chapter 17. A PROJECT. Manasses Leon, the Jew from the Saint Esprit neighborhood, a small-time businessman, was a picturesque Jew: his hooked nose, his thick lower lip, his bright eyes behind glasses that gave him an owl-like air; his hair full of curls, his swollen belly, and his phenomenal, defective feet. Manasses always dressed somewhat shabbily and spoke in a soft, insinuating manner. Manasses, a good friend of Chipiteguy, had done several businesses with him. One day, Manasés León, who was in Chipiteguy’s shop, instead of going out into the street, went into the warehouse and said: “Friend Dollfus, I have to talk to you. ” “You say that, Manasés. ” “I have some news that I don’t know if we could use. ” “Let’s see what the news is.” “It seems that months ago one of the captains-general of Navarre ordered the collection of many silver crosses and monstrances from the province’s churches, abandoned by the priests, and taken to Pamplona. The captain-general before this one decided to put all the silver objects in barrels and store them in a cellar in the city. They wanted to bring them to France and sell them. The current captain-general is said to be unaware of this depot, and the only ones who know where it is are the Spanish consul, Don Agustín Fernández de Gamboa, and the innkeeper on Calle de los Vascos, Ignacio Iturri. ” “And how do you know that, Manasés?” “Because Gamboa told me so. ” “And why did he tell you?” “Well, simply in case I could find someone who would undertake to bring those objects here. He might not have dared to make that proposal to a Christian; but you know I’m Jewish. ” “So he wants to bring those objects to Bayonne? ” “Yes, that’s what he intends. The house where the barrels are kept, full of gold and silver, belongs to an acquaintance of Gamboa, and from what I heard, I’ve heard the barrels are in Iturri’s name, and he once tried to bring them to France, but didn’t dare. “And what’s your idea?” Chipiteguy asked. “I thought we could send one of our scrap metal dealers to Pamplona with a cart to see if they could deliver the barrels and bring them here. ” “How exciting! ” “Do you think so? ” “Of course. So easily, that’s impossible. Do you think that in a country at war they’re going to let a cart full of barrels pass without recognizing what ‘s inside? ” “Yes, that’s true. ” “If we were to attempt this adventure, we’d have to bring that treasure in another way; we’d have to go to Pamplona ourselves. ” “Go to Spain!” Manasses exclaimed. “No, no; no way. The Carlists in Spain aren’t interested in me. Come on! If they want to come to an agreement with me, they can come to my store in Saint Esprit and I’ll sell them whatever they want.” Manasses thought that arriving in Spain and being skinned alive like a Jewish dog would be an immediate matter. “Well, friend Manasses,” said Chipiteguy, “say goodbye to the project, because if you think any old cart driver is going to bring those barrels here from Pamplona to you, without anyone seeing or searching them, you’re thinking nonsense; and if you think that if you tell the cart driver what you’re going for, after going through great dangers, he ‘s going to bring the barrels to you, so you can keep them, well, you’re thinking naivety. ” “I’m convinced, Chipiteguy,” murmured Manasses, “to the point that I don’t want to bother with the matter any further. Going to Spain! No, never. ” “Well, maybe I’ll try to see what’s in it. How many barrels are there? ” “I don’t know. They’re talking as if there were four or five. ” “To bring that, we’d have to come to an agreement with Consul Gamboa,” said Chipiteguy. “And perhaps also with the innkeeper Iturri. ” “And will those church things be worth a lot? ” “It seems so,” replied the Jew. “They are several arrobas of silver. Gamboa supposes there must also be gold and precious stones. ” “Come on, Manasses, we’ll both go,” said Chipiteguy; “we’ll divide the loot. We’ll see what two old ragpickers, a Jew of Spanish origin, and an Alsatian atheist can do together. ” “No, no. I’m not going. If you’re crazy enough to go there, go. I’m not going. ” Chipiteguy turned the news from Manasses over in his mind for a long time, and after thinking it over carefully, he spoke with Don Eugenio de Aviraneta. Chipiteguy had come up with the idea of going to Pamplona in a cart with his wax figures and returning, if possible, bringing some or all of the barrels of silver collected from the Navarrese churches. “I don’t advise you to do it,” Aviraneta told him. “Why? ” “Because it’s dangerous. ” “What isn’t dangerous? ” “Fair enough; but you have no need for that. ” “You have no need to go around here scheming either. ” “Friend Chipiteguy: if you, at your age, feel like adventures, I won’t say anything. Go ahead. ” “Then go ahead. I’m willing. I would like, friend Aviraneta, for you to see the innkeeper Iturri, ask him what he knows about those barrels, how many there are, etc., etc. “Let’s go right now,” said Aviraneta. They went to Iturri’s inn; the innkeeper was in the back room of his haberdashery and inn. Aviraneta explained Chipiteguy’s intentions to Iturri. “Yes,” said the innkeeper, “there are four or five barrels in a wheat warehouse on Calle Nueva in Pamplona. I don’t know what’s inside them.” I think they put the barrels in my name. ” “And you don’t know what’s inside?” Chipiteguy asked. “Not exactly. I don’t think there’s any inventory.” When Chipiteguy insisted on going to Pamplona, Iturri told him: “Be careful and don’t go crazy. The task is very difficult, almost impossible. ” Chipiteguy was stubborn and determined; he was tempted by adventure. He went to the Spanish consulate to visit Gamboa; he told him what Manasses had told him and what he wanted to do. “And you plan to go yourself?” Gamboa asked him. “Yes; if we earn enough, I’ll try to bring the barrels here myself. ” “I don’t know what that’s worth,” Gamboa replied. “If the venture goes well and you bring that money here, we’ll pay your expenses and 20 percent of the sale. If it goes wrong and you can’t bring those barrels, we’ll only pay your expenses. Does that seem right to you? ” “Yes; it doesn’t seem bad to me. ” “So you’ve made up your mind? ” “Yes, I’ve made up my mind. I’ll go and try my luck. Getting into Spain isn’t difficult; getting out is difficult, especially if you bring the crosses and the monstrances. ” “If you want, I’ll give you the order to have those barrels delivered to you. Here’s their description and number. They’re in the name of Iturri, an innkeeper in Bayonne. ” “Yes; I know him.” Gamboa handed him the papers and a confidential, unsigned order for the owner of the house on Calle Nueva in Pamplona, where the barrels were stored. Chipiteguy began to study the matter. The entire Spanish border, from Fuenterrabia to beyond Roncesvalles, was occupied by the Carlists, except for the Behovia Bridge. The scrap metal dealers entering Navarre usually passed through the Carlist camp, a location they knew well. It was necessary to find some influence among Don Carlos’s supporters so that they would not hinder the passage of a cart with wax figures, something that would not be difficult. Chipiteguy rented a four-wheeled cart and two Norman horses and arranged to take his best wax figures to the San Fermín fairs. Claquemain and Frechón would go in the galley, and he and Alvarito in a carriage. Claquemain had made the trip several times; Even if Frechón found out what was going on, he wouldn’t be shocked, because he was a furious anticlerical, and if he demanded anything, he would be silenced by giving him money. The preparations were made quietly. Chipiteguy told Alvarito how they had to go to Pamplona. “But are there fairs in Pamplona during the war?” the boy asked. “No, there aren’t any important fairs; but a few merchants go, especially French, and they earn very well, because there’s no competition. ” “And will it be possible to get through?” Alvarito asked. “A few of us are already working on that, in negotiations with Carlists and liberals. The Carlists will let the wagons pass if each of us pays a few pesetas; then, when we don’t get close to a town on the road, Zubiri or Larrasoaña, we’ll join a Frankish company and with it we’ll enter Pamplona.” The galley was loaded, a little car was prepared, and one day Chipiteguy announced at home that he was leaving for Pamplona the following morning to spend a few days. Manón, who was getting ready to visit a family friend on Calle l’Orbe, asked in surprise: “What, are you going to Pamplona, Grandpa? ” “Yes. ” “You hadn’t said anything. ” “It’s a project that suddenly occurred to me. ” “And what’s there in Pamplona? ” “There’s a fair. ” “Then take me too. ” “It can’t be. You have to be here in front of the house. ” “And Frechón? ” “He’s coming with me. ” “And Alvarito? ” “Also. ” “What must you have thought, Grandpa! You’ve thought of something that you don’t want to tell me. ” “Nothing, nothing. ” “Aren’t you going to do something dangerous? ” “No, no; don’t worry. ” “Because what would I do if I were left without my grandfather? ” “No, I won’t do anything dangerous; calm down.” “You’re going to make us uneasy at home.” Chipiteguy kissed his granddaughter and told her to go to her meeting. The next day, before Manón had even gotten up, Chipiteguy and Alvarito set off in their carriage along the banks of the Nive. The carriage with Frechón and Claquemain had left earlier, and, joined by several others and a pencil seller’s carriage, headed toward Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. Three days later, the carriages and carriages entered Pamplona through the Puerta de Francia and set up shop on the Paseo de la Taconera. Chipiteguy carried recommendations from Gamboa for the captain general and the political leader, Don Domingo Luis de Jáuregui. Chapter 18. IN PAMPLONA. The sun was setting flat on the plain of Pamplona. It was a July day, the feast day of San Fermín. Around the city, the fields were mown and being prepared for threshing. The mountains of the Pamplona basin—Perdón and Ezcaba, Servil and Higa de Monreal, San Cristóbal and Silla de Pilatos—appeared blue in the flaming sky. Around the castle, the grasslands were turning yellow; only in the ditches of the wall, in some shady corners, were they still green and fresh; the countryside was dominated by the color of gold, and the city appeared warm within its gray walls, on its vast plain, surrounded by bare mountains. Along the roads, and despite the Carlists occupying the surrounding area, peasants, men and women, came on horses and mules to the festivities, which were celebrated without great splendor due to the war. There was a dizzying ringing of bells from all the city towers in honor of the patron saint. The bells of San Saturnino answered those of the Cathedral, those of San Nicolás those of San Saturnino, those of San Lorenzo those of San Nicolás. Some made that sad, heavy, and oppressive tán tán (tán tán) sound; others, the classic tín tán (tín tán) of two bells ringing, which so clearly reflects the character of the Levitical Spanish towns with priests and pious people. There was also the high-pitched tín tín (tín tín) of the nunnery’s bell. How evocative! How romantic this continuous and melancholic ringing! How one remembers childhood, the sadness of life! The bells of prayer, the Angelus, the Agony, the Mass, the funeral! How they surface the painful depths of existence! How poetic is that sound of the bells! But how good it is to be in a place far enough away not to be able to hear them. On that scorching July morning, the uproar of the bells seemed to dissolve into the parched and deserted countryside, bathed in sunlight, and into the immensity of the blue sky. Chipiteguy and his men had arrived in Pamplona at the end of June 1838. In a week, they built the barracks, which were lined up with eight or ten others on the Paseo de la Taconera. Most of Chipiteguy’s figures had become famous assassins. The Spanish generals and guerrillas had ceased to be Mina, Zurbano, and Zumalacárregui, and had taken on a new persona. In Pamplona, there were certainly people who had personally known these guerrillas, and it was dangerous to present them as if they were being faked, because the fakery could be proven. The hut was opened, and each of Chipiteguy’s companions played a role. Alvarito, dressed as a Pierrot, played the drums and cymbals; Frechón shouted, in front of the hut, with a French accent. “Here you are, sir, the most famous men in the whole world: the most famous assassins and the most notable militants.” Inside, Chipiteguy showed the figures with a chanter and gave explanations: Claquemain took care of the horses and cooked the food inside the galley. Alvarito often thought, while playing the drums and cymbals: “What would my ancestors, the Sánchez de Mendozas, say if they saw me in this line of work?” The people entering the hut had the petulance and impertinence of provincials who despise streetwise and nomadic histrionics , and they made remarks that were meant to be malevolent and bloody. Some of the more daring young men felt inclined to break, to puncture, to commit some ill-intentioned mischief. Frechón, who despite his usual irritability wasn’t bothered by the crowd’s disdain, made misanthropic observations peacefully: “If the majority of the population could be considered like cattle and treated as such, society would improve greatly. ” “You have to start by being Napoleon to do that,” Chipiteguy replied. Alvarito pretended not to notice the people’s comments and spoke in French. In this contact between the public and the fairgoers, he sided with the latter. Alvarito was developing a deep antipathy toward the nobility, who looked down on him with contempt. His people were beginning to be, not like his father’s aristocrats, the serious gentlemen, the president of the Court, the director of the Institute, the colonel, the respectable cuckolds, military men and civilians with grave and serious faces, as if carved from berroqueña stone, full of distinction and majesty, but the actors and puppeteers of the fair. To guard the wax figures’ hut, they would sleep there, alternating two by two, some nights Chipiteguy and Alvarito, others Frechón and Claquemain. On other days they went to a house on Calle del Carmen, where Chipiteguy had lodging. It was a very painful impression on Alvarito to lie down and sleep in front of those wax figures, which in the light of a candle appeared more horrible and threatening than ever. These wax monsters, this black guard of specters, lived, for Alvarito, a sinister life, if not in the waking period, then in the dream. Then, among the shadows of the brain, they would come to life and take on a repugnant and hateful expression; the faces, with their glass eyes, wigs, and false beards, would rise aggressively, gesticulating, and having an air of resentment and revenge. The real faces of the most barbaric poisoners and murderers would not have seemed as ferocious and horrible to him. Alvarito noticed that he wasn’t the only one who experienced this repulsive effect from the wax figures, because sometimes, in the audience, a child would start to scream and kick in fear, and his mother would have to drag him out. “No doubt I’m childish too,” the boy would say to himself. Soon the men from Chipiteguy’s hut became friends with their neighbors. After dinner and finishing work, many of the fair’s industrialists would come and chat behind Chipiteguy’s hut, where the galley had been set up. It was the aristocracy of the huts. The cannon woman, Madame Lalande, with her husband Raul Culot; the rattlesnake butter seller, Mr. Cavendish, who was Scottish and wore yellow leggings; the one who sold bottles of Swiss vulnerary for wounds, Onofrius Müller, who was from the Tyrol; the French village physician, Monsieur Bazin; the seller of unbreakable pencils, Mr. Clarck, an Englishman, and the sailor who advertised Macassar virgin oil for hair, who was Breton, and whose name, he claimed, was Gontran Montdidier, Penhoel de Montbrisson. Of these personages, the majority dressed like everyone else, except for Monsieur Bazin, the French people’s physician, who wore a tailcoat and long hair; Onofrius Müller, who wore a red livery with braids and a tricorn hat, Mr. Clarck, and Monsieur Montdidier. The latter was dressed as a sailor, with long hair, and had three portraits of himself painted in oils, almost as pleasing as Chipiteguy’s wax figures , and which formed a veritable and interesting triptych, which served as his attraction. The first was entitled: Before the Treatment, and showed Monsieur Gontran Montdidier Penhoel de Montbrisson, bald, like a bald bullet; The second was called: During the Treatment, and the sailor had ordinary hair, already quite long, although with some bald spots; the third was: After the Treatment, and then Mr. Montdidier’s hair was a flood of capillaries. Clarck, the English pencil salesman, rode in a cab. He dressed in a blue tunic with silver stars; he covered his head with a plumed helmet and spoke from the box. Mr. Clarck sharpened his pencils with a pocketknife two hands long and sometimes with a cavalry saber. Apparently, this device was successful. His servant, Tom Phips, a man with the face of a grumpy dog, also wore a helmet and used to blow from the top of the cab to call the audience, a hunting horn, and during the intervals, a music box. Onofrius Müller was small, fat, long-haired, rosy-cheeked, and he spoke in quite correct Spanish: “Sirs and misses,” he said, standing on a bench, “I have the honor of announcing the true vulnegagia or Swiss tea. Your humble servant is a chemist who has been able to study the effects of vulnegagia. Vulnegagia, misses, has the virtue of pugifying the blood, of making perspiration occur through sudoges and oginas, of removing ictegicia, dropsy, gout , and rheumatism; to expel tapeworms and worms, to strengthen the lungs and liver, and to prevent intermittent and remittent malarial fevers. A bottle of vulnegagia, sir, costs two pesetas in all pharmacies; I, as a tribute to this illustrious city, sell them for two gems. The French people’s physician, Monsieur Bazin, had a shack with a sign that read: Palace of Marvels, under the direction of A. Bazin, physicist of the French people. Why did the French people need a special physicist? We don’t know. The French people’s physician, Monsieur Bazin, was a genius. His thoughts were overwhelming, and he used to walk around with his hat in one hand and a rush cane in the other, which had a beautiful white ball in the handle. With this cane, he made pinwheels in the air, stabbed trees, dusted off his trousers, beat dogs, and caressed children, for the cane was an integral part of the interesting personality of Monsieur Bazin, a physicist of the French people. The Spaniards at the fair were, for the most part, poor people; one had a view or tuti li mundi in a cart, another a cosmofrog, a third a device like a castle, with which he predicted the fate of each person and the numbers that would be drawn in the lottery. This one, who was a Castilian yokel, dressed in corduroy and wearing a cap, would say: “For two centavos, the fixed lottery numbers and the fate of each person will be given. Who wants another?” There was also a man with a merry-go-round and another with the wheel of fortune. The merry-go-round was an old-fashioned merry-go-round, without mirrors, or oriflammes, or undines, or pigs, or elephants; a classic merry-go-round with some poor, miserable cardboard horses. The man from the tuti li mundi, Mr. Paco the Asturian, the one from the cosmorama, played the drum, and despite being a heavy, quiet guy, he entertained the people, telling them what they were going to see and the stories of the people who appeared in the optical views. “Come on, gentlemen, come on!” he would say. “Here you will see a view of beautiful Venice! Tan taran tan taran tan. And what views, gentlemen! So many churches! So many towers! So many palaces! So many gondolas! So many gondolas! So taran tan taran tan. Look at that gondola going down the Grand Canal! There are two lovers in it. She was one of the most important ladies of the town. He is a young Venetian, elegant and well-groomed. How the tortoises coo! So much for the smack, so much for the smack. Look at that old woman looking at them from the other corner! How indignant she is because they don’t make fun of her! And she has a mustache. She could twirl her mustache. Onward, gentlemen, onward! So much for the smack, so much for the smack. The one-man band Remifasol, a Savoyard, met with the poor industrialists at the fair . He played eight or ten instruments simultaneously with his hands and feet, including an accordion, cymbals, a bass drum, and a flute. Another had the Ferris wheel, or the reolina, as he called it, which was a wheel like the waffle maker’s, on which you played for two centavos, and he could play a fan, a piece of candy, peanuts, a peseta , and even a live rabbit. Alvarito made several acquaintances, more or less distinguished. He met the giant Goliath and the dwarf Jimmy, who were on display in a booth. The giant Goliath was sad, apathetic and apprehensive; on the other hand, the dwarf Jimmy was cheerful, impetuous and frankly optimistic. Goliath liked Solitude and the night frightened him; however, Jimmy, malicious, mocking, and daring, wasn’t frightened by anything. Another friend of Alvarito’s was the owner of a shooting gallery and a pim, pam, pum. This man was a blond Frenchman with a big mustache, named Cazenave, and he had a daughter of fourteen or fifteen years old, who was in charge of loading the shotguns for target shooting. Cazenave and Mademoiselle Atala became friends with Alvarito. Cazenave had once been a puppeteer; but he had lost his skills and was a bit weak. The girl specialized in dancing on a tightrope and sliding along a wire, holding on with her teeth to a leather ring. Mademoiselle Atala was blond, bordering on red; she had light eyes, a square face with prominent cheekbones, and a determined demeanor. She was from Saint-Jean-de-Luz and had the air of a scamp. During the day, people didn’t go to the fair very often; if they did, it was mostly to the toy and trinket stalls, and some to the four-a-side market, or cattle fair. But when it got dark and the city gates closed, the excitement began. The lights in the barracks came on, the bells, the drum, the bass drum, and the piston bugle rang. Who said there was misery, war, and calamity? There was nothing but joy, noise, lights, voices, barrel organs, merry-go-rounds going around and bang… bang… bang… In the Taconera, there was a parade, and military music was often played. Elegant young women could be seen, very flirtatious, with black eyes, wearing mantillas, playing with their fans and their eyes, alongside the currutacos who accompanied them and the soldiers who carried their sabers and wore their uniforms. Some, with Diego León-style mustaches and long hair, acted interesting and adopted melancholic and romantic attitudes. Apparently, the military men had good fortune among the ladies of Pamplona. Danger made love disputes reach a quicker conclusion. People approached the Taconera lookout point to contemplate the deep, star-filled night, and saw bonfires and lights in the villages, the Carlists’ marches or the Free Trade Companies that were marching through those towns. This made the celebration more enjoyable, because amidst the dangerous and uncertain shadow that surrounded the city, one had the impression of being on solid ground, safe and illuminated. Eight days after arriving in Pamplona, Chipiteguy told Alvarito that he thought the public had grown tired of the wax figures. “Do you think so?” ” Yes.” “I don’t think so.” “I know the public,” the old man replied. “And what are you going to do? Leave?” “No.” I’m going to take the cosmorama to the shack and come to an agreement with the man who has it. Alvarito thought that was a rather bad combination; but he didn’t say anything. Two days later, Chipiteguy told him that, since the pictures of the man in the cosmorama were quite damaged, he was going to ask Alvaro to arrange and fix them. “But I don’t know how to draw or paint for that,” Alvaro warned, somewhat alarmed. “It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t take much. ” “I don’t know if I’ll know how to do it.” “First you arrange the pictures with paste,” Chipiteguy repeated, “and then you touch them up a bit with paint.” Alvarito thought the position was very responsible; but he promised to do the work as conscientiously as he could. Since it was not easy to do this in the barracks or in the galley, as it required care and meticulous attention, Chipiteguy told Alvarito to stay on Carmen Street and said at the house that they should give the boy a room. The owner, who was a candle maker, took Alvarito to a small office with a table, a chest of drawers with a Child Jesus holding a silver ball ; an antique green sofa, some chairs, also green, and the walls covered with horrible old paintings of saints. Alvarito took the pile of prints that needed to be restored there and set to work with all his good faith. It did not occur to him that the only thing The intention was to get him away from the barracks. When Alvaro showed the old man his first restorations, Chipiteguy thought they were very good. Alvarito worked all day long. Sometimes he erased, other times he cleaned very carefully with soap and hot water. He restored what he could and left the prints to dry on the floor, on the sofa, and on the dresser; a poorly made line, a runny ink, worried him. In the afternoon, with the boy from the house, he would go for a walk in Taconera. The boy from the house, son of the owner, whom they called Cholín, was a Carlist, like his entire family. The boy taught Alvarito the interesting things about Pamplona and what interested him, as a Carlist. The two of them went to see the Citadel and the bastion where Don Santos Ladrón was shot at the beginning of the war. Cholín recounted what the Carlist general had said when they forced him to turn his back to be killed, and how, after his death, they carried him and his lieutenant Irribarren out through the Socorro Gate to be buried in the cemetery. A cannon shot, fired in the middle of the afternoon from the same bastion, announced to the people of Pamplona that the sentence had been carried out. Cholín had met Don Santos Ladrón in Estella and thought him a great man. Cholín also showed him the house on Paseo de Valencia, near the Taconera, where the rebels of the Free Companies had recently killed General Sarasfield, and where Espartero, in reprisal, had shortly afterward shot Colonel Iriarte and his companions, most of them Freemasons and supporters of the independence of the Kingdom of Navarre. Cholín was horrified by the idea of Freemasons. Alvarito no longer had any effect. After dinner, Cholín’s mother would tell Alvaro old stories about the city. From her tent, she had seen Colonel Zumalacárregui pass by on a cold October morning and leave through the Puerta de Francia. Shortly afterward, it was learned that he was in Huarte Araquil, leading all the Carlists. He couldn’t explain why Alvarito felt less and less enthusiasm for Carlism the more he lived among Carlists; but that was how it felt. Alvarito didn’t want to leave his friends at the fair, and at night, tired of stories about Cholín and Carlism, when the stalls were closed and the owners and their servants went for a walk or sat around their premises and wagons, Alvaro would join them. Most of them chatted or played cards. Miss Atala, the archer, went with Alvarito several times to sit at the Taconera lookout at night. She didn’t mind the boy; but he didn’t like the puppeteer with her scheming, scheming airs. She had her strange, bohemian, wandering dreams; she thought the ugly, miserable world she lived in would open up at any moment and the admirable palace would appear with its oriental splendors. She didn’t know what the magic word would be, what the moment would be. Alvarito was enthusiastic about Manón and spoke only of her and Bayonne. To Miss Atala, Bayonne seemed like a horrible, boring town. Sometimes the puppeteer and the boy agreed. The scenery was inspiring; those mild nights, with the sky full of stars, the surrounding darkness, the mysterious lights in the distant villages, the alert sentinels; all of it spoke to the imagination. In that small group of puppeteers and acrobats, there were some minor complications during the Pamplona fair. Monsieur Montdidier Penhoel de Montbrisson had a very beautiful wife and was jealous of her. Madame Montdidier was a dark-haired woman from Bordeaux, pretty, with black eyes, a bit of a womanizer, a bit of a flirt, and she easily listened to those who courted her. The French village physician, Monsieur Bazin, and the seller of pencils that never broke, Mr. Clark, men with fiery hearts, both fell in love with the beautiful madame. Monsieur Bazin, the French village physician, had more resources than Mr. Clarck; he had first of all a blue tailcoat with gold buttons, and in his hut, the Palace of Marvels, a host of mysterious things: Leyden jars, Volta batteries, a pneumatic machine, etc., etc. In addition, he made thunder, lightning, and hail in his laboratory. Mr. Clarck had nothing but his mail, his helmet, and his saber for sharpening pencils. Madame Montdidier was inclined to listen to the French village physicist with curiosity; but Mr. Clarck, jealous of his rival’s success, informed her husband. Montdidier was indignant to learn of his wife’s sympathy for this charlatan, who claimed to make lightning and hail in his hut, and he bitterly rebuked the French village physicist. The physicist replied arrogantly, and Montdidier called Cazenave to arrange the matter. Cazenave decided that the best thing would be for the physicist and her husband to have a good fight on Vuelta del Castillo; but, in terms of fighting, Montdidier had the disadvantage of having long hair, and on the other hand, he couldn’t be told to cut it, because that would cut off his diet. In view of these considerations, the matter was closed, and the physicist never went near the Montdidiers again. While Alvarito lived on Calle del Carmen illuminating prints, Chipiteguy tried to carry out his projects. First, he went with Gamboa’s letter to the wheat warehouse on Calle Nueva and saw the barrels. There were five of them, quite large. The warehouse manager said they were doing him a favor if they would remove them. They could take them whenever they wanted. It wasn’t easy. Chipiteguy tried a barrel to see if it could be transported to the fair without difficulty. He filled the barrel with water and, at dusk, put it on a cart and went out onto the street. Shortly after, a guard approached him and asked what he was carrying. Chipiteguy told him it was water with a little bleach to clean his wax figures. The guard told him to show him the water in the barrel, or else he would have to go to the Alhóndiga (grandma’s market). Chipiteguy saw clearly that it was not possible to remove the entire barrels without anyone noticing, and he decided to break open the bottoms in the warehouse and take out the contents in sacks. To do this, he had to rent a part of the warehouse and seal it tightly with boards so that he could not be spied on. Then Chipiteguy, Claquemain, and Frechón left with sacks on their shoulders, usually at dusk. Sometimes they left via Nueva Street and other times via San Antón Street, because the warehouse had an entrance on these two parallel streets. During that time, Chipiteguy made his arrangements. The wax figure shed had closed. Every day, Frechón, Claquemain, or Chipiteguy would go with sacks from the warehouse on Calle Nueva to the shack. Alvarito was told that they were in the business of buying scrap iron, which rather shocked him, because this business was bound to be unprofitable since they had to transport the scrap to France. Undoubtedly, the wax figures, even if they didn’t bring anything, had to bring more. When most of the figures had been prepared by Alvaro, cleaned and retouched, Chipiteguy announced that there were no more people because the fair was coming to an end, and that it would be better to leave. After a few days, Alvarito saw with some astonishment that they were filling the cart with the wax figures and that Chipiteguy was renting another cart for the purchased scrap iron, some of which was very rusty and some painted black. Chipiteguy arranged for Claquemain and Alvarito to go with the two carts and for Frechón to wait for them before the border, in Valcarlos. He would leave shortly after. Chipiteguy invited his three employees to lunch at a restaurant on Mañuetas Street, and the next day they all set off. Chipiteguy dismissed Frechón, and after dismissing him, he undoubtedly changed his mind and told Claquemain and Alvarito that they should head to San Sebastián with the carts. He would join them later. Claquemain and Alvarito’s journey was long. They traveled via Irurzun. The road was bad, hollow, and crushed by the passage of cannons and troop wagons. At every turn, Liberal and Carlist patrols stopped them and asked for their documents. Claquemain knew people along the way; he had plenty of money, which Chipiteguy had given him, and the journey presented no difficulties. Sometimes Claquemain was drunk, and they had to wait for him to sober up. The man was always in a bad mood and did everything possible to make Alvarito’s life miserable. Chapter 19. THE RETURN. Four days after leaving Pamplona, Claquemain and Alvaro arrived in San Sebastián; they ended up at an inn in La Brecha, and shortly afterward, Chipiteguy appeared in his little carriage. Chipiteguy made various arrangements to transport his scrap metal to France and decided to ship it onto a schooner with the wax figures and send Claquemain via Irún with the empty galley. Chipiteguy and Alvarito went on the schooner. Alvarito had never sailed before and was deeply curious about the sea. As he left San Sebastián, he contemplated with great attention the rocks behind the Castle of La Mota, festooned with foam; then the opening of Zurriola and the cliffs of Mount Ulía, the narrow entrance to Pasajes, and the layers of stratified sandstone like the leaves of a Jaizquibel book. “Don’t look too long. Don’t get seasick,” Chipiteguy told him. Indeed, at last, Alvarito got seasick and had to lie down. The wax figures worried him. Two or three generals moved and rushed forward as if they were about to attack or win a medal, and one of the ladies hit her head and cracked it. As they crossed the Adour bar and the ship’s rolling stopped, Alvarito’s seasickness subsided. As they approached Blancpignon Hill, the boy saw Chipiteguy triumphantly singing his song of bravery at the top of his lungs: ” Atera atera trapua salzera eta burni zarra champonian.” Chipiteguy was undoubtedly pleased with the expedition. They docked in Bayonne, at the wharf of the Avenues Marinières, and the old man and the boy went to the house at the Reducto. A few days later, the shed in the Plaza de la Porte d’España was reopened with the wax figures. The scrap metal was what never appeared, at least publicly. The treasure on Calle Nueva had evaporated. A feeling of surprise remained with Alvarito from this trip; Everything about him had had a slightly absurd air… One night, in his room in the Plaza del Reducto, Alvaro dreamed he was walking along the ledge of a bridge, over a mill irrigation ditch, a place he remembered having passed in his childhood. There was barely enough room to put his feet on that ledge. He crossed it several times, without fear and with curiosity; but when he left, he met an old woman who smiled at him… and he began to tremble. He always felt the same; the old woman was dressed in black, who smiled at him suggestively, making him shudder with terror. Who was this woman? What did she mean? Probably Death. He didn’t know, because she wouldn’t reveal her secret; but who could it be but Death? Suddenly, the place where he had come out along the ledge was transformed into a booth for pin-pam-pam dolls, and Miss Atala, with her blond hair, appeared. Atala handed out the bills, and he took twelve balls to throw at the dolls. Each one weighed as if it were made of lead. Suddenly he noticed that the dolls were all the types he had met at the Pamplona fair: the physicist, Montdidier, Clark, etc. Alvarito threw the heavy ball at the first figure; it twisted upon impact and reappeared upright again. Then Alvaro made another effort and woke up. Chapter 20. CHIPITEGUY’S EXPLANATIONS. Frechón, with his habit of spying on everyone and listening behind doors, had found out about Manasseh’s conversation with Chipiteguy and the latter’s visit to Gamboa. When Frechón arrived in Pamplona, he found a way to meet Chipiteguy alone and posed the question. “I know that this trip,” he said, looking down at the ground, “is about more than just exhibiting wax figures. ” “What do you know?” the old man asked, suspiciously. “I know what you discussed with the Jew Manasses, and I also know that you went to visit the Spanish consul. ” “Are you a witch, Frechón? ” “At least I know how to listen, and I’m no fool. In me, you can have a friend or an enemy. If you want it all for yourself, I’ll be an enemy…; if not, we’ll come to an understanding.” Chipiteguy reluctantly admitted that he was indeed going to Pamplona to collect the monstrances and the gold and silver crosses packed in barrels and find a way to transport them to Bayonne. He told him that if the deal went well, he would give him a share of the profits. “How much are you thinking of giving me?” asked Frechón, looking at him sideways. “I’ll give you ten percent of what I earn. They’ll give me twenty. ” “It’s stupid,” muttered Frechón. “What’s stupid?” asked Chipiteguy. “It’s stupid of you to be content with twenty percent, because if the deal goes well we can keep it all.” Chipiteguy looked at Frechón attentively and said nothing against it. All he did was praise him for his perspicacity. A few days later, the old man explained to Frechón and Claquemain what he planned to do. He said nothing to Alvarito because he thought the young Spanish aristocrat, who went to mass every Sunday, would be scandalized if he knew they were planning to take the trinkets and jewels from the churches to sell in France. Frechón and Claquemain weren’t impressed by this idea. They emptied the barrels in the warehouse on Nueva Street and carried the cult objects in sacks to the wax figures’ hut. They were chalices, lamps, candlesticks, incense burners, crosses, reliquaries. There, in the hut, by the light of a footlight, the treasure from Nueva Street was piled up; the precious stones were torn from the chalices and processional crosses and, wrapped in paper, were placed on the heads of the wax figures. They took the crosses apart, crushed the gold and silver bars, twisted them, and painted them black and red. “I don’t think we’ll find a chemist to analyze this scrap,” said Chipiteguy, laughing. “I don’t think so,” replied Frechón. ” And now, what project do you have?” “Now,” Chipiteguy replied, “I’m going to Arneguy and San Pie de Puerto so that they don’t cause us any trouble at customs. You go to Valcarlos and wait there, pay the Carlists, and tomorrow the galley will leave with Claquemain and Alvarito. ” “Good,” said Frechón, “give me some money.” Chipiteguy gave him one hundred duros. “Prepare everything in such a way that no one will think to look at what’s in the wagons,” the old man ordered. “I will. ” “Oh! And keep these stones in your pockets; I also intend to take some. Just in case they take the wagon from us, so that we don’t lose everything. ” Chipiteguy gave a few stones, emeralds and topazes, which Frechón eagerly saved. Chipiteguy and Frechón left Pamplona. The next day Chipiteguy appeared in the city and gave new orders. The galley had to go to San Sebastián. Frechón waited impatiently in Valcarlos; he traveled the road to Pamplona until he was convinced that the old man had deceived him. Chipiteguy, from San Sebastián, hesitated between going by land or sea. At that time, General Jáuregui’s forces frequently traveled from San Sebastián to Irún. Chipiteguy presented himself to the general, intending to take his cargo and cross the border. Jáuregui asked him what he was taking to France that worried him so much; a question that made the old man suspicious. Then he decided to go by sea. That junk, which was magnificent silver and gold, along with the wax figures, remained on the dock in San Sebastián for several days. until he entered the hold of a schooner. Upon arriving in Bayonne, Chipiteguy took his wax figures back to the hut, and the silver, gold, and precious stones for the crosses and monstrances must have been stored in the cellar of his house. Chapter 21. CHIPITEGUY, GAMBOA, AND FRECHÓN. Frechón had returned to Bayonne, tired of waiting at the border. For a week he impatiently watched the road to Pamplona, and finally, he returned deeply indignant with his employer. In Bayonne, he took the emeralds to a jeweler’s house. They were fake. Upon arriving at the house and seeing Chipiteguy, he told him that they could not go to Valcarlos because a Carlist force had moved in that direction , and that was why he decided to go to San Sebastián. The old man added that on the road to San Sebastián they had identified all his wax figures and found the gold, silver, and precious stones, although most of these were fake. “It was a bad deal in the end,” Chipiteguy said hypocritically; “we’ll see what each of us gets. ” “This filthy old man has played me,” Frechón muttered. “He’s going to keep everything.” The fact was that the treasure on Calle Nueva had disappeared. Chipiteguy had, without a doubt, swindled it. Frechón concealed his anger and continued working at the ragman’s house. A few days later, he wrote a letter to the Spanish consul and asked for an audience. Frechón felt cheated by Chipiteguy, and as much as he felt cheated by the money, he felt cheated by his pride as a clever man, who had been mocked. “Old Chipiteguy won’t leave without me stopping him. He’ll fall. Frechón is no fool.” Frechón went to visit the innkeeper Iturri, and then to Aviraneta, to whom he recounted in detail the affair of the crosses and monstrances of Pamplona. Aviraneta knew part of what had happened and listened to Frechón with great interest. Frechón became agitated, frantic, thinking about the disappointment he had received. At Chipiteguy’s house, he followed everyone with a furious look. A few days later, he received a reply from the consul, setting a time to receive him. Señor Gamboa greeted Frechón very coldly; he listened to his story with indifference and then said: “I didn’t ask that Señor Chipiteguy to do anything. If he went to Pamplona, it must have been on his own.” Hearing what the consul said, Frechón was disconcerted. “Chipiteguy told me that he was going to Pamplona, on your orders, to pick up some barrels loaded with gold and silver.” “Well, this Chipiteguy has deceived you. ” “And how did they give you those barrels without anyone’s order?” asked Frechón. “I don’t know anything, my lord,” replied the consul. “And you, how do you know? ” “How do I know? Because I went with him to Pamplona. ” “And have you seen those barrels? ” “Yes, sir. ” “And were there really crosses and monstrances? ” “Yes, there were. I believe it! ” “With precious stones? ” “With precious stones of all kinds. Good and false,” Frechón must have said to himself. “And what have you done with them? ” “We took everything that was inside the barrels to where the wax figures were. There we dismantled the crosses and monstrances, we removed the stones; These, for the most part, we put into the heads of the wax figures, we crushed the gold, and we painted the silver crosses black to make them look like iron. Then Chipiteguy told me to wait for him in Valcarlos to arrange our departure from Spain and entry into France, and, while I waited for him, he ordered the cargo to be taken to San Sebastián and from there he shipped it to Bayonne. “And here you have it? ” “Yes, sir. ” “Where are you keeping it?” “Probably in the cave at home. ” “That is to say, he’s played you. ” “And you too,” replied Frechón, who was deeply annoyed at being in a position of inferiority before someone. “Not me,” replied Gamboa. “This is a matter that doesn’t interest me.” “Bah!” Frechón retorted impertinently. “Believe it or not, it’s all the same to me; but it shocks me that you’re so naive as to think I’ve had a hand in this melodrama. ” Frechón stormed out of the Consulate, and Gamboa wasn’t very pleased. A few days later, the Spanish consul summoned Chipiteguy and questioned him about the crosses and monstrances brought from Pamplona. Chipiteguy said he had seen the governor of Navarre, and the latter had ordered him to keep those jewels in his house and that he would send a delegate from the Spanish government to seize them and then sell them. Gamboa became irritated and said furiously, “What you want is to keep that wealth for yourself. ” “That’s what I think you’ve always intended,” replied the ragman from the Reducto. Aviraneta learned from the Consulate clerks that Gamboa’s cries had been heard in the Plaza de Armas. In the heated argument between the Consul and the scrap metal dealer, it became clear that both wanted to steal the gold, silver, and precious stones from the crosses and monstrances. Perhaps Gamboa considered reporting Chipiteguy to the police; but how could he legitimize his intervention? After careful thought, he decided to do nothing and forget about the bad deal. Chapter 22. AFTER THE ADVENTURE. Chipiteguy, like Euclio in Plautus’s Aulularia, was on the way to unhappiness because of the treasure on Calle Nueva. Where did he have it? Where did he keep his riches, brought from Pamplona? Undoubtedly, he had hidden the silver, gold, and precious stones in the cave. Sometimes, like a thief, but trembling with joy at the same time, with a triumphant look, he would go down to the cave and spend there probably two or three hours gazing at the treasure. When he saw Frechón , he would smile maliciously; a smile that made his assistant tremble with fury, and only Manón and Alvarito did he welcome with pleasure. “Old Chipiteguy is still capable of many things,” he would repeat boastfully. “My old friend Julius Petrus Guzenhausen from Aschaffenburg used to say : Dollfus is a very dangerous mako.” The ragpicker from Reducto, after his famous trip to Pamplona, had changed a lot; his life was more preoccupied. Since the trip, he had a great deal of distrust; he looked at people with suspicion; he didn’t like scrap metal dealers to enter his yard, nor bricklayers from nearby construction sites to look out onto his roof. He himself checked at dusk to make sure the doors and windows were properly closed and ran through the house from top to bottom. Andre Mari and Tomascha thought these were the old man’s quirks. Chipiteguy stated several times that they lived in exaggerated abandon and without any surveillance, especially at night, and he brought a mastiff to guard the house. Finally, he had the idea of making a round every night, half seriously, half jokingly. Manón would take a large lantern; Chipiteguy, Quintín, and Alvarito would each arm themselves with a pistol and search the house, from the attics to the cave. “Don’t tell Frechón what we’re doing,” the old man advised Quintín and Alvarito. “No, don’t worry.” “When the time comes, I’ll remember you, because you’re faithful. Rest assured. ” These searches, walking through the rooms at night, influenced Alvarito, exciting his imagination. Above all, it was very unpleasant for him to enter the cave and see the group of assassins standing there, wrapped in their sackcloth, with the air of horrendous ghosts. Chipiteguy was in Bordeaux twice and took Alvarito with him. He didn’t tell him why he was going, but Alvaro heard him talk two or three times about jewelers and appraisers of precious stones. Chipiteguy introduced him to some of his merchant friends and showed him the city. “When you go to Spain,” the old man told him, “you can compare that with this.” There was malice at the bottom of this sentence, because although Chipiteguy didn’t He had a poor opinion of Spain, just as Frechón didn’t have a very good one either. Alvarito also went, accompanied by a Carlist, to visit the Maroto family, who lived in a country house near Bordeaux. The general’s two daughters, born in Peru, had been educated at a school in Granada. The youngest, especially, was very melancholic and very pretty, and fondly remembered the garden at the Granada school. Alvarito spoke with them a lot and even wrote to them several times afterward from Bayonne. The day before leaving Bordeaux, Chipiteguy took Alvarito to a large exhibition of wax figures in Bordeaux. “This is a different kind of exhibition from our shack,” Chipiteguy said , laughing. “It may not be as complete as Madame Tussaud’s in London, but it’s very nice.” You went down a dark ramp to a basement, until you reached a room with several wax figures dressed in modern clothes. From this hall, galleries, also dark, led to halls or caves with strange plays of light. The figures were almost the same as those Alvaro had seen in the Chipiteguy cave, but more defined and well-dressed. The audience was moving around, talking quietly, a little overwhelmed by the mysterious atmosphere of the underground. In one hall, Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, Madame Royale, the Princesse de Lamballe, and the Dauphin were sitting, as if in a small gathering around a table . All impassive, dressed up, and mannered. Alvaro felt like shouting at them: “Hurry up. Don’t be idiots, the shirtless ones are coming to cut your heads off.” In another hall, Napoleon was at Malmaison, with Josephine, Talleyrand, Fouché, and the generals of the Empire. All as peaceful, dressed up, and as mannered as the others. One of the generals looked at Alvarito with a very discreet air. “We’re waiting for the cannon of Waterloo to fire before leaving here, because we’re a bit bored,” the gentleman seemed to be saying. The Girondins were dining in a prison cell. One of them was giving a pompous speech with a mystical and enlightened air. He was probably talking about the rights of man and the Supreme Being, and other things that then amused people without knowing why, and today, without knowing why, bore us. Then they saw Latude in his prison, the cenobites of the Paraclete, the Christian martyrs before going to the circus, Marat, dead, with Charlotte Corday at his side; Danton and Robespierre, shouting… ” “This is better than ours, eh?” exclaimed Chipiteguy, laughing. “Yes; but there are no assassins here,” replied Alvarito. “That’s true. Nevertheless, there must be.” They looked closer and found a Lacenaire with his dagger, but compared to Chipiteguy’s Assassins, he was a ridiculous character. The visit to the wax figures was beneficial for Alvarito, because it took away for a long time the terror he had of them. He thought that during his stay at Chipiteguy’s house, he had been frightened by a chimerical danger, and he decided to look things in the future face to face, whether they were wax figures or people of flesh and blood. PART FOUR: DOVES AND HAWKS Chapter 23: MANON AND ROSA. Alvarito was rising in status at Chipiteguy’s house. The old man regarded him more and more and was growing fond of him. Andre Mari, who had always regarded him with sympathy, pampered him; Tomascha considered him one of her favorites, and Manon, like a friend. Having risen in importance in the house, he had been moved down from the attic to a room on the second floor. Alvarito was happy, as happy as an unrequited lover can be. Alvarito, who had his sister as a confidant, confessed that his enthusiasm for Manón grew by the minute. Manón was a unique girl, with extraordinary grace and charm. Besides, she wasn’t afraid of anything; she would go up to the attic alone or go to the cave at dusk without fear of those cursed wax figures that had so haunted him. frightened. Manón was always lively, active, and hardworking; but when she put her mind to it, she was even more so. Sometimes she would become interested in cooking and go into the kitchen , helping Baschili make cakes and flans filled with cream, spun eggs, or jam. Chipiteguy and Alvarito, who had a sweet tooth, would eat these desserts, savoring them and licking their lips, and Manón, who hardly liked sweets, would laugh. Manón had great talent, grace, mischief, and a true musical sense. The only thing Alvarito didn’t like was the girl’s versatility and flirtatiousness. “You have to come meet her,” Alvarito said enthusiastically to his sister. “Well, yes, I’ll go,” she replied without much enthusiasm. “She’s very eager to meet you.” ” Why? Have you told her about me?” “Yes, very much.” “You’re naive.” You think others are going to share your enthusiasm. Why not? I speak well of good people, and no one will say you aren’t. How naive! No, I’m not naive; you’re not going to convince me now that everyone , starting with you, is terribly selfish. Alvaro’s sister was a bit stout-backed, pale, with very expressive black eyes, a large mouth, and an awkward face. She was very friendly and very helpful. She was willing to do everything that others considered cumbersome and annoying. Dolores Sánchez de Mendoza went to Chipiteguy’s house and met Manón and Rosa. The two cousins were very kind to her and showered her with gifts. What did you think of Manón? Alvarito asked his sister as they hurried out of the Reducto house. She’s very pretty and very nice, but… But what? I don’t think you should get your hopes up. A girl so beautiful, so brilliant, who must be rich, doesn’t marry a poor man. Alvarito grew sad upon hearing his sister’s remark, and his face grew long and dejected. “Why don’t you go to Rosa?” Dolores asked him. “Because I don’t like her,” Alvarito replied sulkily. “Well, she’s a very good, very affectionate girl; I find her pretty. ” “Yes, yes, I’m not saying no; but I don’t like her. She’s not charming. ” “That’s true; you don’t have it either, and neither do I. ” “Well, I know; maybe that’s why I like what I don’t have. ” “Well, kid, we have to make do. ” “In that case, everyone will do what they think best. ” “Of course they will; but it’s always better not to despair, insisting on achieving the impossible. I can see that Manón is a very attractive, very gracious, and very pretty girl ; but for that very reason, and because she’s rich, she must have many suitors.” Dolores became friends with Manón and Rosa, especially Rosa. From then on, she began to use the familiar form of address with the two cousins, and after her, with Alvarito. He noticed from the beginning that Dolores, with a certain instinctive tendency, sided with Rosa and opposed Manón. Manón was sometimes imprudent; she had had a disordered and fantastical upbringing, prone to springing unpleasant surprises on old Chipiteguy; fortunately, the girl possessed a foundation of common sense, despite her fantasies and extravaganzas. Manón occasionally used mockery and sarcasm, but deep down she was sentimental and romantic. For anyone who courted her, she was a difficult woman to conquer, one who demanded too much of people. Rosa was always modest and shy; spending her life in public at a bazaar had not removed her congenital shyness. Rosa had an elongated oval face, her mouth too large, with thick lips; A certain swarthy, dull pallor to her face, like a Creole woman, and beautiful black hair with bluish tones. At first, she seemed dull and graceless; but as one got to know her, she became more attractive and her personality slowly and surely developed. Dolores often spoke to her brother about Rosa’s charms, her friendliness, and her homemaking skills; but Alvarito did not. He was more enthusiastic than Manón and had eyes only for her. He felt a hunger and thirst for Manón’s presence. This constant, unquenchable hunger and thirst to see and hear her was, without a doubt, love. He felt as if he had found his center of gravity before her; however , when he moved away from her, it seemed to him that the support of his life was missing. Sometimes the pleasure of being at her side gave him the impression that his heart was light. When he was away from her, he thought about what he was doing at that moment. In bed, constantly, half-dreaming, he would have conversations with her, make plans, debate sentimental issues, explain himself, and legitimize himself. Dolores, with feminine malice, would often divert her brother’s attention from Chipiteguy’s granddaughter and try to direct it toward Rosa. Manón could already tell that Dolores and her cousin Rosa had formed a somewhat offensive and defensive alliance against her; but she felt so superior that she didn’t care. Another friend, a relative of sorts, used to visit Manon’s house some evenings: a girl named Marguerite d’Arthez, or Morguy, the daughter of a wine merchant. Morguy wasn’t nice; Rosa hated her for her sharpness; only Manon could resist her. Dolores, when she met her, found her also unpleasant. Morguy was uglier than pretty, very blond, almost red-faced, with small, slightly red eyes, her eyebrows always furrowed, and her lips bulging. Morguy was envious, taciturn, and ill-tempered; she argued easily with her parents, the maids, and everyone else. Her anger easily turned into torrents of tears. That was Morguy: she cried as quickly as she laughed; her laughter generally ended in tears, and her crying, in laughter. She harbored unfounded grudges and spent days raging, without speaking. Morguy recognized her bad temper, and when she told Manón about her tantrums, partly furious and partly self-mocking, Manón would laugh uproariously. “This girl won’t be in a good mood until she gets married,” Chipiteguy would say to Morguy. “Yes, I’m doing well,” she would reply; “I’m going to remain a spinster. ” “Well, it’s no good for you, because you’ll have no one to argue with and you’ll cause a lot of trouble. ” “Do you think I’m that poisonous?” “No, no. A woman, like all of them; but, well, if I were Alvarito’s age, I’d trust rowdy women more than dead flies. ” Chipiteguy always took Manón’s side, more or less surreptitiously, and believed Rosa and Dolores to be prudish and hypocritical. Alvarito and Dolores went to the Earthly Paradise, Rosa’s mother’s toy bazaar, several times . Madame Lissagaray was a woman of forty-five to fifty years old, very thin, with light eyes, and the air of a Lady of Versailles. She was very wise and somewhat conceited. Her characteristic feature was her cold and indifferent face, which contrasted with her effusive voice and gestures. When she spoke, she seemed to belie everything she said with her eyes, and yet what she spoke was true, for there was nothing false or hypocritical about her. Madame Lissagaray spoke with great discretion and sympathized with Alvarito and his sister. This lady had had several children who had died, and she cared for Rosa, her only daughter, with a tenderness mingled with affection and fear. Above their bazaar there was a small, low mezzanine where they had lived for some years; but it was so crowded with goods that they abandoned it and went to live in a house on the Avenue des Boufflers, which they owned, with more space and a better view. Rosa and Manon used to show their friends, the young boys, the toys of the Earthly Paradise, and, above all, some old ones, now somewhat neglected and out of fashion, but prettier than the modern ones. There was a room in the mezzanine, at one end of the bazaar, where several clocks had ended up. There was a very beautiful English grandfather clock , with a copper face, and on it a small circle of the minute hand; a cuckoo clock, another with a chiming of bells and chimes , and several gilded table clocks housed in glass lanterns. In the same corner, there was also a music box with its copper cylinder filled with prongs, and a small barrel organ, made in Geneva, with moving figures on the lid, including a dancing black man, a gentleman in a tailcoat carrying a baton, another gravely playing the cello, and several young ladies in crinolines dancing briskly. There were also some porcelain Chinese figures nodding from inside a lantern; a merry-go-round of dolls that revolved and rang; a theater, Noah’s arks, drumming rabbits, moving snakes, and dolls. Alvarito, who had never had toys, despite being a young man and not old enough to play with them, looked at them with great enthusiasm. Those tin artillery and cavalry soldiers, with their wagons and cannons, seemed magnificent to him. Another toy he admired was the large, mysterious house, with its green shutters and a long balcony, where a lady in a mantilla would come out, as if to get some fresh air. This lady resembled Chipiteguy’s granddaughter, and Alvaro looked at her with enthusiasm. When Manón went to that corner of the Earthly Paradise, filled with toys, he liked to wind them all up and hear the din of the clocks’ low and high chimes, the tinkling of the music box, see the Chinese nodding their heads, the merry-go-round spinning, the man in a tailcoat conducting, the other playing the cello, the Negro and the young ladies dancing, and the romantic lady appearing and disappearing on the balcony of the solitary house with the green shutters. What a poem or a short story, in the style of Hoffmann, would Chipiteguy’s friend, the poet Julius Petras Guzenhausen of Aschaffenburg, have written if he had the good fortune to exist in the world and visit the Earthly Paradise! How well he would have described the movements of those automatons, their bows, their greetings, their dances, full of elegance, mannerisms, and ceremony! Once Alvarito dreamed that he was in a field where there were two large snowballs, made by the children; he approached one and it fled in front of him, and as one fled, the other approached. Then, these two snowballs transformed into two doves, which did the same, and finally, into two clouds. Finally, between them, Chipiteguy appeared, amidst his wax figures, with strange attitudes, making horrible grimaces. Alvarito wondered if these snowballs, these doves, and these clouds were transformations in Manon and Rosa’s dreams. During the spring and summer, Manon and Rosa and some friends, with Alvarito and other boys, went on excursions to Biarritz, to the Chambre d’Amour beach and to Mouriscot Lake. Morguy flirted a lot with Alvarito; but he didn’t like this red-faced, bad-tempered girl. With Morguy, he met her father, Mr. D’Arthez, a wine merchant, and his brother Pierre, whom he liked very much. Morguy’s brother lived an unreal life, reading novels, bored with people. He felt a profound contempt for his surroundings. When he left his job, he would hide away and go read books. His sister almost hated him because she ignored him. No doubt she thought it wasn’t worth it. Pierre D’Arthez was a pale, rather flabby young man who spent his life reading. He disliked commerce at all; he worked resignedly in his office, and when he finished, he would lock himself in his room and read. He had the tastes of an old man. Locked in his room, wearing his dressing gown, his Greek cap, and his slippers, he spent his time reading and smoking his pipe. Young D’Arthez always spoke like a bored and disgruntled man. Reading, by occupying his thoughts so completely, made him look at reality with distaste. Pierre’s room was a room with two windows overlooking a gable roof. His furniture consisted of many books, a couch, and some prints. The young man wrote his memoirs and impressions of his readings every day . His father, his mother, his sister, and his acquaintances reproached him for leading such a sedentary and unhealthy life. No amount of reflection would change his way of life. He shrugged his shoulders at everything. “These people are so boring!” he said to Alvarito. “What a town, Bayonne!” he added again. “I think it must be the most boring town in the world. ” “Where would you like to live?” Alvaro asked him. “I don’t know! Anywhere, but here. ” Pedro didn’t lend books to his sister or his friends. “Why? First, they don’t understand what they’re reading,” he would say; then they’ll leave the book on a bench, or bend the pages, or stain it with makeup. Only young D’Arthez came out of his corner to listen to music, but only certain music. Alvarito thought that Morguy’s brother took literature and music too seriously and gave too little importance to real life. Pedro was a republican and despised monarchists and Carlists. Pedro told Alvarito that he would lend him some books, and, indeed, he did lend him novels by Merimée and Stendhal, which Alvarito wasn’t enthusiastic about, probably because he failed to understand their merit. When Alvarito told Manón that he knew Morguy’s brother, Manón treated Pedro with great mockery and sarcasm. He seemed to her like a pedant, a fatuous man who kept hiding in a corner to make himself interesting. Alvaro defended his new friend; but she continued to speak sarcastically about him. “Manón always speaks badly of me,” Pedro said one day. “Basically, it’s because I don’t pay attention to him. ” “Do you think…” “Yes; if I were to take care of her, she’d despise me even more. I already know that.” But not caring for her is almost an insult to her. Pierre told Manon that, indeed, they had wanted Manon and he to be lovers, but that they didn’t get along; she was willful and flirtatious; he was calm and fond of reading. He didn’t have anything bad to say about Manon; perhaps she was worth more than he; but she had an insatiable turbulence and such versatility that she was capable of driving anyone mad. “She’s a woman of luxury, very charming, I agree; but to have her in our house, I, a modest winemaker, wouldn’t want her.” Sometimes, in the summer, when Manon, Rosa, and Morguy were planning to go on outings, they would invite Pierre to go; and he, to avoid the trouble of arguing, would say yes, but then he wouldn’t go, which infuriated everyone, especially his sister, who spoke ill of him. On one of these outings, Manon, Rosa, and their friends met the Count and Countess of Hervilly. Sonia, the mysterious lady who intrigued Aviraneta, showed great sympathy for Manón, and went to see her at her house and struck up a friendship with her. She was very friendly with Alvarito, and since the Countess spoke Spanish very well, she asked him several questions about his family and Spain. Chipiteguy wasn’t very pleased with his granddaughter’s friendship with the foreigner; it didn’t seem right to him that the daughter of a ragman should be friends with a Countess, but he had nothing to say. The Countess of Hervilly introduced two aristocrats, friends of her husband and hers, to Madame Lissagaray’s house: the Viscount of Saint Paul and the Chevalier de Montgaillard. The Viscount of Saint Paul was about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old; he was a typical northern Frenchman, tall, blond, and strong; the Chevalier de Montgaillard, twenty-three or twenty-four years old, looked like a southern Italian . He was dark-skinned, rather short than tall, with black eyes, thin, with a slightly tired, night-owl air, curly hair, a bold face, and a pale, bilious, and pimply complexion. The Viscount of Saint Paul was known to be from a wealthy Parisian family; there were doubts about Montgaillard. He claimed to be the son of the Marquis of Montgaillard and the nephew of a Count of Montgaillard; but some asserted that neither the county nor the marquisate had any real meaning. The young Xavier de Montgaillard was the son of the titled Marquis de Montgaillard and a Mademoiselle de Crussol. The Marquis de Montgaillard was considered a royalist and had fought in the Vendée campaign with Clarette. He was imprisoned in the Temple. Xavier was the nephew of the famous schemer and libelist Count de Montgaillard, who apparently was not a count. The so-called Count de Montgaillard was a great political exploiter. He exploited the Revolution, the Emperor of Austria, Napoleon, and the Bourbons, and died very peacefully in his own house in Chaillot, bought with his schemer’s savings, at the age of eighty. The Count de Montgaillard received pensions from all the French governments of the time, and the strangest thing was that he had one at all, and a large one from Louis XVIII, of whom he had published a mocking and insulting portrait. The reason for this anomaly seems to have been that the schemer had kept some letters that Louis XVIII had written to Robespierre at the time of the Revolution, seeking to curry favor with him, agreeing with him on many matters, and trying to attract him to his camp. Days after the two aristocrats’ introduction at Madame Lissagaray’s, Alvaro saw young Montgaillard walk past the Redoubt house several times, and Alvarito realized that he must have written to Manon and that perhaps she had answered. One day, in the middle of summer, the Countess of Hervilly invited Manon’s friends and Alvarito to spend the afternoon at the Château d’Urtubi, near Urrugne, the following Sunday. The Countess knew the owner who had invited them. Ten or twelve people went in a large, open carriage: the Counts of Hervilly, Manon, Rosa, and her mother; Dolores, Morguy, and the aristocrats recently arrived in Bayonne and friends of Hervilly, the Viscount de Saint-Paul and the Chevalier de Montgaillard. The viscount and the Chevalier were the highlights of the excursion , especially for the girls. Montgaillard wore a fitted blue tailcoat, like a dandy, and had come from Paris. The Chevalier led the way on the trip; he talked about actresses and dancers, knew writers, journalists, and politicians. He said that since he didn’t have a room, he was thinking of entering Spain and joining the Carlist army in case he found a solution for his life there. He had the protection of the Prince of Lichnowsky. The Viscount de Saint-Paul, more sedate, smiled at Montgaillard’s remarks and spoke little. The young Chevalier was very popular with the girls and was found to be funny and witty, which drove Alvarito to despair, especially seeing Manón flirting with him. It was evident that they were exchanging smiles and glances. How had she come to have this familiarity with the stranger? Is she a woman without decorum? Alvarito wondered sulkily. Alvarito noticed with displeasure that the presence of the two strangers produced in the girls a certain animation, a desire to shine, a disguised rivalry between them, which bothered him deeply, because he understood that the cause of this excitement was the newcomers and that they were the ones who wanted to make an impact. Perhaps only Rosa was a little faithful to Alvaro at that moment; the others had forgotten him. The twenty kilometers of road passed quickly for everyone, though not for Alvarito; they contemplated the sea, saw the mountain range of Spain; Jaizquibel, like a pyramid, and Mount Larrun; they passed in front of Bidart, crossed Saint-Jean-de-Luz, and arrived at the castle of Urtubi. From the outside, it seemed to everyone very romantic, with its little turrets and ivy-covered walls, slightly sunken among the trees. The owner was waiting for them at the entrance to the park, and showed them first to a large drawing room and led the ladies to a boudoir in case they needed to dress up. Then he asked his visitors if they preferred to have lunch in the park or in the dining room. Madame Lissagaray was the only one who would have preferred to have lunch under cover. “Don’t worry; it’s not damp today,” the owner told her. They all went out to the park, which was magnificent, and took a walk through it. He was a windy day from the south, with a red sky that gave the landscape the air of a theatrical set. The linden trees and magnolias, full of blossom, perfumed the air with their scent, a fragrance so strong it was almost dizzying. In this unreal atmosphere, everything seemed motionless and silent. The birds slept lethargically on the branches. A kingfisher passed through the air, so blue it seemed like a piece of sky flying between the trees. Lunchtime approached, and they sat down in a small square of large elms where the table was set. They ate and drank happily, and Manon and the Chevalier de Montgaillard were the ones who talked the most and displayed the most wit. Montgaillard was hurrying along, courting Manon. The Chevalier was using one of those tricks of Don Juanism that is within everyone’s reach; but which, nevertheless, is almost always successful when one is young and not of bad appearance. He appeared indifferent yet attentive to the women, so that, when necessary, he could feign a great impression. This is undoubtedly the ABC of amorous histrionics, but it never fails to have its effect. After the excitement of the meal was over, Manon said he was going to choose a shady spot in the park and take a nap. “No way,” said his aunt, Madame Lissagaray; “I won’t allow it. ” “Why not? ” “Because no, that’s enough.” Manon made a gesture of indifference. After a long time at the table, the owner of Urtubi asked them if they wouldn’t like to see the castle, even though it was small. While they toured the building, the owner spoke of the original foundation of the house, in the 11th century; of the wall that still remained from the 14th century; of Louis XI’s stay in Urtubi when he served as mediator between the kings of Castile and Aragon, and of the lingering memories of Soult and Wellington, who had had their headquarters there at the beginning of the century. He also told them of the eternal rivalry between the Sabelchuris and Sabelgorris parties, white bands and red bands, which divided the supporters of Urtubi from those of Saint Pee in the Labour country. They saw the drawing room, the large dining room, with a marble fireplace that bore this inscription in Basque: Billzen, berotzen, bozten Gathering, warming, enjoying; they passed through a hall full of iron plaques from hearths, from old fireplaces, some very curious, and then went to the library. The owner took out a copy of Pierre de Lancre’s book, entitled: _Picture of the Inconstancy of Bad Angels and Demons_; He showed them a picture of a witch-filled Saturday and read them a paragraph in which it was said that the owner of the Urtubi Castle, at the beginning of the 17th century, after a witchcraft meeting held in his house, had found in the following days that the witches were sucking his blood and sucking his brains, which decided him to denounce them. Everyone laughed, except Alvarito, who thought that the lord of Urtubi was a visionary like himself. From the library they went to the small archive, which had some old documents about the Urtubis, related to the Alzates, Gamboas, Belzunces, Ezpeletas, and the family of the writer Montaigne. They went out into the garden again. A large red cloud had appeared in the west, and the park had a fantastic air in this air, motionless and hot, perfumed by the flowers. Near the castle there was a black irrigation ditch between two stone walls, which took on shades of blood when reflected in the sky. They went out to the park again and came to a fountain. Manon said she had to cast lots with two pins, throwing them into the fountain and seeing how they landed at the bottom; if they landed separately, it meant she wasn’t getting married, and if they landed crosswise, it meant she was. Manon threw in her two pins and they were separated; then Rosa and Morguy threw them, and the same thing happened. Because of the fountain’s spell, none of the three would get married. “Yes, yes; we’ll remain single,” said Manon. “It must be because the men of this land are lacking.” eyes,” said Hervilly gallantly. Manon had picked a flower and placed it on her bosom. Young Montgaillard wanted her to give him the rose she was wearing on her bosom, and she gave it to him. Evening was falling, and, according to what Madame Lissagaray said, it was time to return to Bayonne. “You will have your snack first,” said the master of the house. “It’s getting late. ” “No, no! ca!” They went into the dining room and sat down at the table, which was very elegantly set, with an antique embroidered tablecloth and Sèvres china. Suddenly they noticed something fluttering in the corners. “What is it? A bat?” asked Manon. “No, it’s a butterfly,” replied the master of the house, and with a handkerchief he managed to catch it. The butterfly was large and made a chirping noise as if it were complaining. Alvarito shuddered; the fluttering of the butterfly’s wings and its moans produced an unpleasant sensation in him. “It’s the Sphinx atropos, the death’s-head butterfly,” said the master of the house. “How horrible!” said Rosa. “Let it go. That must be a bad omen.” “Yes, these butterflies frighten people, but they’re harmless to people ; not so in the countryside, where they cause a lot of damage. Morguy wanted to kill it with a pin and take it away. ” “No, no,” said Manon, “we must let it go, let it live. ” “It won’t live long,” said the owner, opening the window and letting it go. ” Some don’t last more than one night; the time it takes to lay their eggs. ” Madame Lissagaray insisted it was time to go back. They said goodbye and everyone got into the carriage. Rosa sat next to Alvarito and talked to him. “You see,” said the girl, “how unlucky I am.” “Bad luck? Why?” “Manón and I are the same age, and we’ve been raised the same way. She’s always successful, and I never am. ” “You are too. ” “No, no. And besides, it’s natural. She’s prettier than me, smarter, more brilliant. All the advantages go to her, and nothing to me. ” “You’re very modest. ” “No. Fate has been very generous to her and very mean to me. She’s a musician, she’s pretty, she’s funny. And I’m stupid, dull, and talentless. ” “You’re very hard on yourself. ” “No, I know myself. I have no charm. ” “Oh! Don’t say that.” Alvarito offered the girl a few compliments, but they were cold and uneffusive . A couple of hours later they arrived in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, stopped for a moment at a café, and got back in the car. They saw the sea near Guethary, blue, embroidered with white against a red, burning, and threatening sky; they saw the San Sebastián lighthouse and the one at Cape Higuer shining . As he approached Bayonne, the moon had risen, large and yellow like a sick woman’s face. Alvarito arrived home; he barely ate dinner and went to bed in his room. As he lay down in bed, the car, the sea, the irrigation ditch with its reddish water, and the image of the witch’s Sabbath from Lancre’s book began to dance before his eyes. Soon he passed from memory to dream. He dreamed that he was climbing, with great effort, a hill topped with a castle, walking between sharp cliffs that seemed made of crystal. After ascending a labyrinthine staircase, he reached an attic with beams on the roof, found a pile of straw, and lay down on it. Suddenly he realized he was standing next to an open window, on the edge of the abyss. Before him was a gloomy landscape, with frowning mountains and narrow valleys filled with trees, and as he gazed at them, his heart sank . Heavy clouds were advancing to surround the castle. In despair, he raised his eyes and became absorbed. The sky was full of bright, unknown meteors; the moon, the stars, and comets, with long tails, leaped in mad races across the firmament. He contemplated this with increasing horror every moment, until suddenly the sun began to rise. Then a delicious calm dominated nature. The sky turned blue; a distant murmur came from the sea, rippling with white waves; a balsamic perfume was exhaled from the woods. Oh! How He breathed the pure air! How the streams and fountains flowed! But this too lasted little, and dusk came, a twilight that at first was admirable. The red and white flowers shone, the bluebells in the green fields; then everything turned ashen; then there was a lament in space; clouds of large butterflies crossed the air. Alvarito felt the need to cry and woke up. He spent many hours awake, tossing and turning in bed, thinking about his dream and about Manón, and sighing involuntarily. Finally, he managed to fall asleep and did not wake up until someone called him in the morning. Chapter 24. FRECHÓN OR THE MISANTHROPICAL JUNK DEALER. Matías Frechón, the bookkeeper of Chipiteguy, was a man of thirty-four to thirty-five years old, tall, thin, dark, with a narrow forehead, thin lips, a red nose, a thin mustache, and long sideburns. Growing his sideburns gave him a certain appearance of a banker or businessman, which he considered very important and very appropriate for his persona. Frechón had a rather disconcerting air. It is undoubtedly not a soap opera fantasy to assert that there are men whose appearance alone inspires distrust and even a marked moral repulsion. It seems that by instinct one can quickly understand that certain facial features represent and are the consequence of a long life of intrigue, hypocrisy, or baseness, and faces with these features produce alarm, not always clearly defined. Sometimes it is not the base deeds that we guess at and give us an impression of alarm and distrust, but the ones yet to be committed, those that are still pulsing in the spirit of the one capable of committing them. Thus, by intuition, we understand that a certain kind of face can only belong to souls disposed to all kinds of villainy. Frechón did not usually laugh; his smile was sad, cold, and unfriendly. Frechón had the air of a false and hypocritical man. He never looked straight in the eye except when he was irritated. He somewhat resembled the wax figures of Robespierre. The man had great confidence in himself, in his intelligence, and in his perspicacity; an expression of superiority was almost always visible on his face. To him, everyone was a fool. If anyone wasn’t, it meant they were scoundrels. The world was made of fools and scoundrels, according to him. Chipiteguy used to say: Frechón’s ideas are sometimes clear one by one, but taken as a whole, they are pure nonsense. So true is it that it is often the poor organization of concepts that makes one mad and insane. Frechón believed himself to be a man of genius who lacked a stage worthy of his merits. Pride, vanity, and the sadness of being nothing suffocated him. “I will be heard spoken of,” he would say boastfully. Frechón professed his misanthropy. This philosopher, Little Timon of Bayonne, had studied to become a priest in his youth and knew Latin, which enabled him to frequently quote phrases from Horace and Virgil. He was quite learned. He read famous causes, anti-clerical pamphlets, and the _Quoter_, Pigault Lebru; he also claimed to have read Fourier. Frechón always spoke with great prudence, considering everything he said. He had acquired the habit of repeating the question asked of him so as to give himself time to think carefully about his answer. Frechón had republican ideas, which did not prevent him from having been for some time in the service of the Spanish Carlists through Roquet, Aviraneta’s agent, and Cazalet, a scurrilous bohemian who knew many secrets about everyone. When people spoke to Frechón about someone’s action or opinion , he often said: “Bah! What nonsense!” Frechón claimed that he had many resources for making money. “If you only knew how many drafts I have every month!” he said proudly . The misanthrope was at the same time fantastic and petulant, skeptical and candidly credulous. It is very difficult in skepticism to arrive at not believe neither in the good nor in the bad. Most skeptics are content not to believe in the good, and true skepticism would be to believe neither in the good nor in the bad. Frechón lived in fantasies; he had a marked tendency toward the secretive, the mysterious, a tendency that was increased by drinking; the misanthrope was very fond of wine and liquor. His world was a strange one, different from that of others. He considered himself old, and one of his manias was to talk about his old age. “An old man like me can’t be fooled,” he often said. ” Old people like me know what they’re doing.” Apparently, the idea of being old delighted Frechón greatly. The misanthrope felt great contempt for his youth; it seemed to him that young men were good for nothing. Frechón greatly enjoyed spying. He was born with a native inclination to spy. Uncovering a mystery was a delight for him. In a town like Bayonne, where many political intrigues were hatched and deals involving military supplies and contraband were made, Frechón lived like a fish in water. He spied on the French and the Spanish, the Carlists and the Liberals, the customs officers and the smugglers. “Bah! I know what that guy does. ” “Bah! I know who that woman’s lover is. ” The misanthrope had a disdainful and superior “bah!” for everything. Old Frechón, as he called himself, had spent many nights on a street corner enduring the cold of the night or lying in the field receiving the rain to find out something that, after all, meant nothing to him. Making a hole in the wall and spying on what was going on in a neighboring room, even if nothing special was happening there, seemed to him a marvelous source of interest. The Spanish Civil War gave him many reasons for spying and intrigue. Another delightful pleasure for him, undoubtedly full of pleasant nuances, was writing anonymous letters. This gave him one of his greatest satisfactions. He mastered the technique of writing anonymous letters; he had it very well studied; he knew by what clues the author could be discovered, he knew the system for leaving no trace, and in his house he kept papers brought from outside and taken from various places. He came to enjoy the sweetest impunity in this way; the thought that there was no way of discovering him and that he could, moreover, suggest the idea that someone else was the author of the anonymous letter. Frechón was envious; his greatest pleasure would have been to take money from certain people and, upon leaving them in misery, make a mocking face at them. Frechón lived with his sister, a spinster with a very bad temper and very resentful temper. The misanthrope liked Manón and always looked at her with the eyes of an ogre, but she deeply despised him. Chipiteguy’s trick with the monstrances and the crosses of Pamplona filled Frechón’s rage. Since returning to Bayonne, Frechón had been furious with Chipiteguy. The misanthrope pretended to be friendly with the old man, wheedled out what he could from Alvarito and Claquemain, and went to visit Gamboa for a second time. The Spanish consul was indignant with Chipiteguy, but he didn’t want to confess what had happened and kept repeating that he hadn’t given the junk dealer any orders. Frechón spent hours and hours thinking about preparing a trap for the old man, pacing around the shop like a wolf in a cage and crunching his fangs. It also occurred to him that Alvarito was in his way, and he wrote him two anonymous letters threatening him. Another time he had Claquemain disguise himself in the Murderer’s costume and appear through the window in the grille overlooking the courtyard where Alvarito worked. Alvarito had a moment of serenity; he understood the farce, went to the cave, and locked the door. Soon Claquemain had to call. Two days later Alvarito received a letter that said: If you do not leave this house immediately, you will die.–_The Murderer._ Alvarito had enough presence of mind not to say anything to No one. He now understood where the threat came from. Alvaro saw with astonishment that he was more terrified of imaginary dangers than real ones. In the face of the latter, he kept his cool and didn’t lose his temper. Chapter 25. MADAME LISSAGARAY’S GATHERING. Rosa’s mother, Madame de Lissagaray, took a great liking to Alvarito and invited him to spend the afternoon at the gathering she held at her house every Sunday. He could bring his sister Dolores if he wished. The Lissagaray gathering was known in Bayonne as almost a marriage agency; many young people attended. Madame de Lissagaray, a widow and owner of the Bazaar des Arcs, the Earthly Paradise, hoped to marry her daughter off; she needed a man to run her business. So that the girl could meet some young men and become known, she received her friends on Sunday afternoons. Manón almost always attended this gathering, and Alvarito and his sister Dolores began to attend as well. Various games were played at the gathering, especially wisth, and conversation ensued. The serious people discussed what was happening in Bayonne, the politics of Louis Philippe’s government, the Carlist War, and the protection given to the Spanish liberals by General Harispe, something that most people did not approve of. Madame Lissagaray had to be constantly vigilant to ensure the conversation didn’t slacken and also to prevent any young man or girl from causing any inconvenience. The ladies brought crocheted or needlework to the gathering. The young people played the piano, sang, danced, and discussed the books of Walter Scott, Chateaubriand, and the Viscount d’ Arlincourt. The more fashionable discussed Balzac, Dumas , and George Sand. On certain days of the year, there was a dance. The contradanza or quadrille, the lancers, and the waltz were being danced . The polka craze hadn’t yet begun . Several curious individuals attended the gathering, both Spanish and French. Aviraneta frequently went to hear what the Carlists were saying in Bayonne about the war. Word had spread that he was a Freemason, and everyone repeated it, but since he was a kind man, he was forgiven. Another Spaniard, a frequent participant in the gathering, was a certain Don Ramón, a Carlist émigré and a man of some fortune, who spent his free time putting Spanish lyrics to French songs and giving them away to friends. His wife used to sing them, accompanying herself on the guitar. With his adaptations, the songs took on a curious, false, and romantic air in Spanish . Among the ladies at the gathering, Miss María de Taboada stood out , a determined-looking Spanish Carlist woman who, it was rumored, was about to marry Don Carlos’s general, Don Bruno Villareal. At this time, María Luisa was serving as a governess in the home of a French family on an estate near Bayonne. María Luisa had come to Madame Lissagaray’s gathering several times in the company of Don Eugenio de Aviraneta and two or three times with Don Pedro Leguía. Also frequenting the gathering was a Spanish Carlist lady, Doña Tecla, a friend of Doña Jacinta Pérez de Soñanes, also known as the Bishop. Doña Tecla wore an enormous black wig and displayed a sense of self-importance and pedantry. She defined what could and could not be done. Everything, according to her, was legislated, and she was the one who held the key to the truth. This Tecla struck the true note, the “lá” of the tuning fork. He was the arbiter of good manners and good manners. A very distinguished young lady at the gathering was Paquerette Recur, a damsel of about thirty, slim, smiling, always dressed in flowing dresses. Miss Recur, very amiable, very gracious, had a rather vague face, which sometimes seemed pretty and sometimes not. She had been on the verge of marriage two or three times; but, undoubtedly, she lacked the determination and was afraid of matrimony. She reminded Alvaro of the wax figure that Chipiteguy and he had They called her the English Belle. Paquerette was, people said, very sentimental and somewhat romantic, and she had always avoided marriages of convenience because she dreamed of marrying in love. Dolores and Rosa became very close friends with Paquerette and received her confidences. At that time, Miss Recur was very close to Marcelo, Chipiteguy’s nephew and Manón’s uncle. Marcelo was a blond, smiling man, between thirty-five and forty years old, a widower with no children. He had been married to a woman with a somewhat sour character, so it was said. Marcelo was a mechanical engineer and had many ideas, some very brilliant, but he didn’t make any money. He was constantly seen with his suit wrinkled and his hands stained, with acid-burned nails . Chipiteguy welcomed him because he noticed that Marcelo didn’t claim his inheritance; Manón joked with him a lot about Miss Recur. Alvarito became Marcelo’s friend, and Marcelo explained his ideas and projects to him. The mechanic dreamed of industrializing the world, of harnessing waterfalls , the power of the sea, and even the sun. He mistakenly assumed that the period of industrialization of the land would arrive in twenty or thirty years. While he dreamed, money flowed by, and he couldn’t stop it . At home, Marcelo could be seen making plans at a kitchen table, smoking, with a ruler or compass in his hand, or analyzing something in a test tube. Marcelo’s mother was very uncomfortable with him; but if anyone spoke ill of her son, she vigorously defended him, saying that people couldn’t understand him because he was too intelligent to deal with clumsy and uncouth individuals . The people of Bayonne, according to her, understood nothing more than trade with their socaliñas, like the Jews, and Marcelo was a wise man, an inventor. The romance between the mechanic and Mademoiselle Recur brought a smile to Madame Lissagaray’s circle of friends, but there were some who didn’t view it with sympathy. One of these was Mademoiselle Veronica Bizot, whose harsh, sour demeanor contrasted sharply with Paquerette’s girlish, airy grace . Mademoiselle Bizot was a spinster, between forty and fifty years old, frightening with her sinister expression and aggressive personality. Mademoiselle Bizot, who had been a tenant in the house belonging to Madame Lissagaray, was tall, lanky, sallow, with a man’s face, a strongly pronounced nose, and light, opaque, mocking eyes. She covered her already bald head with a blond wig and had a few moles with bristles on her lip. Bizot was a woman of perverse intent, who spoke incisive phrases whenever possible and gave bloody nicknames. They welcomed her into their homes for fear of her sharp tongue. Madame de Lissagaray was one of those who feared her most. Perhaps due to her evil instincts, Bizot gravitated toward eroticism. She lived in a shack on Rue de la Carnicerie Vieux, from where the great elms of the city wall could be seen. Bizot recounted that at the back of her house, there was a window overlooking another street, opposite a brothel overlooking the Rempart Lachepaillet, and she would spend hours and hours from her observatory watching what was happening in the brothel. She also went to a farmhouse where there was a sire bull to see when the cows were brought in to be mated. She probably regretted not being a cow. Bizot had lived, as she explained, satirically, with an aunt who must have resembled her in her evil intentions, whom she hated deeply. For years and years, aunt and niece waged a mortal war against each other. They lived together because they didn’t have the means to live apart. In their hatred, they went so far as to throw dirt in each other’s chocolate and bitterness in their wine. If one had plants on the balcony, the other would water them with hot water until they died. The niece even put fleas in her aunt’s bed. Bizot was a sadistic woman, and the little girls she had Servants, whom she paid almost no wages, were beaten and their arms covered in bruises. The spinster was consumed by rage at her ugliness, her uselessness in life, and the fact that she hadn’t been able to inspire anyone. She only seems to have had a few successes through letters expressing romantic feelings. She felt a feline hatred for other women. Bizot had only a tiny income, about six hundred francs a year, and lived in combinations, eating out and sometimes almost without eating. Bizot, who felt no sympathy for anyone, had to feign kindness and interest in people. For some time, she had been on a very intimate note with a young neighbor of hers, who led a rather loose life , with whom she dined frequently. This girl, known as Nené, was exploiting some old lovers. Nené’s father profited from his daughter’s prostitution and lived a happy, happy life . Bizot was a close friend of Nené, defending and advising her. She had seen the girl’s progress for some time, and with the constancy of a spinster and a provincial townsfolk, she waited for her like a hunter for his prey. Nené was quietly immodest, a courtesan; but Bizot insisted everywhere that what was said about her was false and slanderous. There was nothing crazy or frivolous about Nené. She was as quiet as a cow, shameless; she put on weight, rarely left the house, wasn’t wasteful, and was hardworking. She dressed well and often went to Biarritz and Saint-Jean-de-Luz, where she had appointments with wealthy bourgeois from the city. The old man, the father, was involved with a maid. The lives of Nené and her father gave much to talk about. A watchmaker neighbor, who had a shop on Basque Street, said that on certain days the gentlemen who visited Nené had gathered, and one of them had said, parodying Napoleon’s phrase in Egypt: “From the depths of these armchairs, forty centuries look down on you. ” Nené, advised by Bizot, kept money. Bizot would have liked to exploit it, but she and her father vigorously defended the quarters . When the old maid and the entertaining girl played cards , they struggled to wring a penny out of each other for hours on end. The only thing Bizot usually took out of the house was food. Nené knew very well how to invest her capital in solid income and partly in usury. This practical knowledge seems to have come from her mother, who was the daughter of a Jew. Nené’s house had a respectable and elegant air. The Bayonne hetaira dressed with an elegance that seduced her lovers, talked and discussed literary matters, and gambled. She beat the old fellow guests at whist because she was clever and played tricks. Nené had a mannerisms and a way of speaking that the vicious and debauched old merchants who visited her found very distinguished. Nené, despite being distrustful and malicious, believed in fortune-tellers and card readers and often went, in the company of Bizot, to the house of a fortune-teller. This fortune-teller, Madame Canis, had been a midwife and lived on Rue de la Tour de Sault, in a black house near a turret of the old wall. Madame Canis was an adventurous woman, married two or three times, a matchmaker, a midwife, and, according to gossip, a provider of little angels for heaven, or at least for the uncertain Limbo. It was said that while she was a midwife, one of the ritual questions she would ask her client or whoever accompanied her was this: “Should the child live or not?” Once, she had a lapse in attention and ended up in prison, and they prevented her from continuing her profession. At Madame Lissagaray’s house, Bizot almost always acted as a post-office girl. She satirized people, imitated them, caricatured them, with a hidden intention and background of bad blood. All of Madame Lissagaray’s companions had been parodied by the old maid, naturally, when they were not present. She also imitated Patrich, the gravedigger, and Moses very accurately. Panighettus, who lived on the same street as him; Chipiteguy and his two servants, Quintin and Claquemain. Beneath the politeness, Alvarito was struck by the malevolence of the people. He was surprised that there was no affection among them. Almost everyone hated each other. Could this be the general coldness in life? He would have liked to have love, sympathy for others, and for his love and sympathy to be returned by others; but, apparently, such reciprocal love was impossible. The people, most of those around him, were indifferent, hostile, and mocking. Hence the great affection he grew for Chipiteguy, who was friendly and effusive toward him… One day, Madame Lissagaray’s social gathering was a gathering of beautiful women. There was the Countess of Hervilly, a blonde beauty, and Madame de Vargas, a brunette of a classical type; María de Taboada, with her whimsical and strange air; Paquerette Revur, like a porcelain figurine; Rosa with her southern type of woman; and Manón, blonde, cheerful , and wild. Among them fluttered a few young lieutenants, some dandies, Viscount Saint Paul, and the Chevalier de Montgaillard, who was one of the most successful. Alvarito had long hoped that the Chevalier de Montgaillard would pay court to Manón; everything made him think so; but suddenly, a great hostility arose between the young man and the girl, and the elegant man appeared as a satellite of the Countess of Hervilly. “He’s an imbecile,” said Manón with a very characteristic emphaticness; “he thinks everyone, starting with women, should have the qualities that he lacks: kindness, generosity, and so on. Let him go to hell!” In turn, the Chevalier seemed to say repeatedly: “How wicked women are! Why are they so wicked?” The knight began courting the Countess of Hervilly. In the short time he had been in Bayonne, Montgaillard had become well-known. He was frequently seen with the Marquis de Lalande and the Prince of Lichnowsky. It was believed he had a secret mission within Carlism. Alvarito thought Manón had met Montgaillard immediately. She was such an intelligent woman that nothing could have escaped her. Manón’s superiority was evident in all aspects of life, according to young Sánchez de Mendoza. He recognized himself as far inferior to her; Manón learned languages easily; Alvarito was very clumsy; Manón had a great musical sense; on the other hand, Alvarito completely lacked it and was slow to grasp any song and couldn’t hum the Hymn of Riego or the Marseillaise well. Manón grasped all the songs he heard on the fly with extraordinary speed. He would play them immediately on the piano and hum them, giving them a lot of air, but he didn’t want to study. “I would only study,” he used to say disdainfully, “if they could hear me and applaud me; but to be heard by my Aunt Maria and Tomascha, it’s not worth the effort. ” Alvarito became sad thinking about this. How could he conquer this capricious, independent, and seductive girl? How could he transform the woman of luxury into a woman of the home? He agreed in his heart that he couldn’t compete with her in anything. Since he had quarreled with the Chevalier de Montgaillard, Manon listened to Alvarito more attentively and showed him greater friendship. Manon lent him Walter Scott’s books, which she had in a bound collection with illustrations. Alvarito found Manon in the heroines of all the Scottish author’s novels. There were Diana Vernon, from *Rob Roy*; Mina and Brenda, from *The Pirate*; Julia, from *Guy Mannering*; Edith, from _The Puritans of Scotland_; Lady Rowena, from _Ivanhoe_; and Amy Robsart, from _Kenilworth_. Some autumn evenings, Alvaro accompanied Manon and was very happy. She had Andre Mari, a relative who lived on the street of the Tower of Sault. Sometimes, on winter evenings, Manon would visit the house. Since the place was far from home, Chipiteguy sent Alvaro to accompany her. When they went in the middle of the afternoon, they reached the Spanish Gate, where all kinds of rental cars were piled up, and they went out into the countryside. Other times, they marched along the wall, seeing the green glacis, with their cannons and mortars, and the old towers of the ancient Gallo- Roman wall. At night, on their way back, they entered the black, deserted streets, lit by a distant lantern hanging from a rope, and fought against the gusts of wind that whistled around the corners. Manón held Alvarito’s arm, and they walked like that, laughing at the force of the wind, until they reached the Plaza del Reducto. The two of them talked about their previous lives, their family, their childhood memories. She asked him a thousand questions; she wanted to know how he had lived before. Alvarito didn’t like Manón coming to his house, lest he see the ridiculous, poor furniture they had; but Manón didn’t mind poverty. It didn’t seem like an inferiority, far from it, but rather a state, which might or might not be temporary, but which had nothing to do with dignity. Manón and Alvaro disagreed on anything. When Alvarito said he was a monarchist and a Catholic, she petulantly claimed she was a Jacobin and a freethinker. When he said he was a Spaniard and a patriot, she retorted that she didn’t feel French, but Basque, and that she had the blood of witches. That willful nature, of great exuberance and spontaneity , couldn’t be reconciled with a calmer, more restless temperament, like Alvarito’s. Alvarito was increasingly in love with her. Manón was flirtatious and flattered by making conquests. She spoke a lot to Alvarito, consulted with him, and sometimes condescended to play the piano just for him. Sometimes he hated her, as when Manón said sweetly to his Aunt Maria: “I don’t want to be at home. I’m bored with you.” In general, he found her on a higher plane. Alvarito recognized that this didn’t depend on her fortune; that the superiority of Chipiteguy’s granddaughter lay not in external circumstances, but in personality. Manón had more energy, more life; but he, on the other hand, was more persevering, more faithful. Manón undoubtedly had great vitality. She was like a thriving plant, full of sap; on the other hand, he wasn’t: he was a lesser organization . With Rosa, Alvarito was on the same level; perhaps at times he felt superior. Rosa wasn’t gifted in the arts; neither music nor literature excited her. She said yes, she liked them a lot; but she said this because she didn’t dare be sincere. She mainly lacked intuition. Her judgments depended on what she heard around her. Rosa was extremely shy. In her mother’s social gatherings, she was often seen blushing at the slightest thing and stammering in confusion. That was when she was at her most beautiful. Madame de Lissagaray knew that her daughter was nowhere near as brilliant as Manon; but for her, this inferiority of her daughter’s was an advantage, not a disadvantage. It was clear that to be a bourgeois woman married to a merchant, one didn’t need to be original at all. In fact, this was almost a disadvantage. Manon and Rosa didn’t see eye to eye either, and they argued over their respective opinions; Manon, imperiously, and Rosa, in her timid and timid, though tenacious, manner. Manon believed that love should be something joyful and fun, and always new. “No, no; no serious things, just laughing, singing, and flirting.” For Rosa, on the other hand, love had a different character. It was self-denial, sacrifice, fidelity to one’s beloved. “You speak like a book,” Manon would say; “but all that must be very tiresome.” Alvarito also had chivalric ideas: nobility, respect for women, not cheating, and keeping one’s word at all costs were his tenets. Alvarito believed that these ideas came to him from his aristocratic ancestry, so exalted by his father, from the blood of the Sánchez family. of Mendoza and the Montemayors. This belief in noble blood, dictating the elevated practices of life, was for him a religion, a kind of mysticism that encouraged and sustained him and would have prevented him from committing anything vile and driven him to attempt something heroic. Once, Alvarito and Manón spoke at length, returning at night from the house of Andre Mari’s relative, where Manón went. They discussed each other’s personalities, their male and female friends. Manón had no enthusiasm for marriage. “Getting an annulment in front of a man,” she said, “doesn’t seem ideal to me. ” “But who gets an annulment? Women have their jobs,” said Alvarito, who was deeply conservative. “Would you like to have a woman and live only for her?” Manón asked him. “I would.” “All the hours, all the days? ” “Yes.” “Every minute? ” “Yes.” “To have no thoughts but those of her? ” “Yes. ” “To have nothing hidden? ” “Nothing . ” “Well, my boy, no, not from me. I would always like to have freedom. ” “Freedom? From what? To come and go? ” “Not only from that, but also the freedom to want. ” “To want and not to want? ” “No; the freedom to want once more, then less; the freedom to forget for a moment… ” “But that comes from life itself, I think; age, occupations…” Manon laughed. “Why are you laughing?” asked Alvaro. “Because you seem like an old man; you reason too well. ” “I don’t have your exuberance; you have more life than I do and more talent. ” “Bah! ” “Yes. Everyone notices it. Pedro, Morguy’s brother, says that you have an insatiable turbulence and such versatility that you’re capable of driving anyone crazy. ” “What a fool! ” “No; it’s true. All the rest of us are calmer than you.” –Yes, dead flies, as my grandfather says. You can’t trust still waters. –Wouldn’t you trust me? –Yes, yes. Why not? –Pedro assumes you’re a woman of luxury, but not a comfortable one. –And he, what is he? An idiot. Manón, no doubt, hadn’t forgiven Morguy’s brother for not having fallen, like the others, at her feet. Chapter 26. THE WORRIES OF HIDALGO SÁNCHEZ DE MENDOZA. While Alvarito and his sister Dolores supported the household and worked, one keeping accounts in the grimy and sad office in Chipiteguy, the other bent over the frame embroidering for Falcón, their father, Don Francisco Xavier Sánchez de Mendoza y Montemayor, devoted himself to the duties inherent to his status as a noble hidalgo, which consisted mainly of doing nothing and wandering through the pleasant fields of politics, genealogy, and the Sánchez de Mendoza coat of arms. Politics worried Don Francisco Xavier. What was he going to do? He was an important man. Who’s to blame? It’s Fate that places some at the top and others at the bottom of the valleys. The hidalgo was convinced that he was being pursued by the agents of the Spanish consul, the Marotists, and the Freemasons. There was a war to the death between him and the Freemasons. He saw suspicious types approaching him on the street; He understood that Masonic symbols were made in cafes and that there were signs on the balconies of houses, with colored handkerchiefs, and at night with lights. He knew all this very well, but he kept quiet. Another thing that worried him deeply was Alvarito’s position in Chipiteguy’s house. After his son had been employed in a rag and cloth shop, could he become a knight? Could he belong to the military orders? He feared not. It was something terrible, this employment of the boy in Chipiteguy’s house, in the shop of a rag and scrap dealer, a Jacobin and a Mason to boot; something almost as terrible as the bar of bastardy that appeared—it was proven!—in the Pérez del Olmo branch of the family, this very disturbing Olmos branch. What a disgrace! What shame! What would his friend say? Duke! What would the general say! Would the news reach Don Carlos? Señor Sánchez de Mendoza might have thought that perhaps if he had worked, his son would have had no need to enter the scrap metal shop; but no, he would never dedicate himself to ignoble work, and noble jobs didn’t come along. Whose fault was it? Sánchez de Mendoza’s wife, Alvarito’s mother, a poor, thin, sad, lemon-colored woman, devoid of any joy, with the inner conviction that her life could be nothing more than a series of misfortunes, a long, dark, and painful tragedy, listened to her husband like an oracle. Don Francisco Xavier had convinced her that he was an important man and that, furthermore, he protected her, placing a protective mantle over her shoulders. Sometimes, thinking about this, Don Francisco Xavier would extend his arms as if he were placing a mantle and imagine, moved, that he was indeed protecting his wife. Since she usually had a lot of work to do in the house, the gentleman would wash his handkerchiefs and collars himself in the washbasin, have his daughter iron them, put on his hat and cape, and go off to amuse himself and show off with a certain air of a musketeer. He would stroll past the shop windows on the central streets, where he would study their elegance; he would watch the watchmaker or the saddler at work; he would greet some of the owners of grocery stores, shoe stores, and linen shops on Calle de España, who were Carlists, and he would buy two quarts of tobacco in a newspaper cone, which he would immediately place in a leather pouch bearing the coat of arms of the Sánchez de Mendoza family. He would buy his tobacco at the Little Swiss, which was a café and tobacconist. When he had money, he would sit at a table and drink coffee. The Little Swiss had in the window, among pipes and links, a wax figure of a man with a large, furry hat, a blue jacket with gold braid, white trousers, black riding boots, and a very long clay pipe in his right hand. It was one of Sánchez de Mendoza’s great pleasures to spend time at the Little Swiss drinking coffee and talking. The café’s patrons were servants, coachmen, grooms, street vendors, and a few girls who worked in the warehouses, an audience that Sánchez de Mendoza liked, and he was an aristocrat, perhaps more in theory than in practice. Another of the gentleman’s gathering places was the Sevillano guitar shop. The Sevillian Juan Manuel Redondo was a short man, with the air of a bullfighter, who had left Córdoba, where he had recently lived, due to the ill will of the liberals, who had believed that Juan Manuel had had relations with Gómez’s troops. Juan Manuel, after work, used to sit in his white blouse and play and sing with great artistry. Several Spaniards often came to hear him, and more would have come if the Sevillano’s wife, a tough woman from Soria, hadn’t scared them off, saying her husband needed to work. At dusk, the guitar shop took on a classic Andalusian feel. A lamp lit up the store, the ceiling hung with guitars, bandurrias, and lutes; the strings could be seen on some shelves, and in a corner, the lathe. In the guitar shop, they usually talked mainly about Spain, with occasional discussions of politics. Sometimes, Don Francisco Xavier needed to take more care of his clothing to visit the Bishop of León, who had come from Guethary; his friend Monsieur de Corpas, the Marquis of Hautpoul, or Monsieur Auguet de Saint Sylvain. Then his wife would leave the kitchen for a moment, or the rag she was washing or mending. The daughter would abandon her embroidery and the two of them would groom the nobleman. Mr. Sánchez de Mendoza also attended the gatherings of the English journalist Mitchell, who, after the Vergara Agreement, wrote the pamphlet entitled _The Countryside and the Court of Don Carlos_, which violently attacked Maroto. This Mitchell was married to a Spanish woman and was said to be Jewish. When the Bishop of León arrived in Bayonne, Don Francisco Xavier was of Those who came forward most hastily to kiss his ring. Sánchez de Mendoza was anti-Maroto. General Maroto seemed to him a bold revolutionary, an enemy of the throne and the altar, of this throne and this altar that should be intangible, immaculate for every good monarchist and Catholic. The gentleman said this about intangible and immaculate with a slightly tearful voice. Don Francisco Xavier didn’t have many occupations; his two main talents consisted of writing in an Iturzaeta-style script and tracing coats of arms and then painting them in watercolor. He wasn’t very good at them; but since he earned little, one peseta and two pesetas each, he provided the cardboard and earned some money, money that naturally he didn’t give to his house, but spent at the Little Swiss. Alvarito and Dolores supported the family. Dolores worked for Falcón’s antique shop; she had learned to compose antique embroidery, to imitate it, and to make coats of arms. She skillfully combined Venetian, Alençon, and needlework, earning six or seven francs a day. She also did some outside work, and Mademoiselle de Taboada had recommended her to French legitimist families, who paid her handsomely. Despite this prosperity, which was gradually arriving in his home, Don Francisco Xavier was not happy with his children’s position. Dolores, embroidering outside! Alvarito, in a scrap metal shop! What would the ancient Sánchez de Mendozas say if they saw their descendants engaged in such vile tasks! What would the Montemayors and the Porras say! How their bones would tremble with shame and indignation in the old sarcophagi, decorated by medieval artists in the silent cloisters of cathedrals! That worry and the discovery of the Pérez del Olmo family’s bastard bar , that unreliable elm branch, soured the monarchist aristocrat’s moments. Alvarito, although not with the same intensity as his father, also thought about his ancestors. He believed that they, from their cold graves, exhorted him to be loyal, brave, and a knight. For Alvarito, those Sánchez de Mendozas, whom he imagined as pale and armored with steel, were as real as if they truly existed. Many times, while walking along the banks of the Adour, he asked the advice of the old men of his family. But if Alvarito still had respect for his ancestors, he was beginning to feel a certain disdain for his father, which was growing. He couldn’t help it. It was impossible. No matter how hard he tried to convince himself that children should respect their parents, this respect quickly vanished. The fact that the nobleman lived quietly off the work of his children, especially Dolores, as if it were an income, was beginning to bother him. It didn’t matter to him, it didn’t bother the nobleman that the girl, weak as she was, spent hours working, bent over the frame; she wasn’t capable of saving him a bit of work; on the contrary, she hurried him, making comments about the urgency of the work. The good nobleman had a knack for phrasing, something that already caused Alvarito the beginnings of indignation. Señor Sánchez de Mendoza, noticing that his son was looking at him with a questioning air, as if asking, “And what do you do?”, invented all kinds of lies. From one day to the next, he would start working. That vague time from one day to the next never arrived. Towards the end of 1838, the campaign of the anti-Marotists in Bayonne intensified. Señor Sánchez de Mendoza, as a perspicuous anti-Marotist, acquired some importance. It was said at that time that Don Carlos’s wife , the Princess of Beira, had already become convinced that Maroto was a revolutionary, sold out to the Freemasons and the enemies of the sacrosanct throne, and of the no less sacrosanct altar, and that she had quarreled with him. Father Cirilo de la Alameda, whom the impious liberals called Father Ciruelo, also decided to declare war on Maroto. The Carlists, and among them our nobleman, who viewed their party’s policy as a matter of servitude to the Lord, believed that the break with Maroto would greatly influence the course of the war; but this was not the case. All the ultra-royalists, the puros, as they called themselves, spoke every day with increasing hatred of Maroto and with increasing enthusiasm of Cabrera, who was the hero, the paladin par excellence. Our Sánchez de Mendoza rolled his eyes when speaking of the leader of Tortosa. Those resounding words—the paladin, the throne, the altar, the puros— filled his head with wind. Despite everything, the apostolic schemes made no progress. The Capuchin Casares, sent by the Bishop of León with letters attempting to discredit Maroto, Villarreal, and their followers, was arrested by the same Carlists and imprisoned. Father Larraga and General Uranga returned from abroad penniless. Chapter 27. THE SECRET OF SONIA VOLKONSKY. Madame Lissagaray’s social gatherings continued lively, albeit with some interruptions. In mid-autumn, on Saint Martin’s Day, there was a costume ball at her house. Almost every year around this time, a large gathering used to be held. The girls had high hopes for the party. Morguy would come dressed as a shepherdess, à la Watteau; Rosa, in a very pretty Directory costume ; Manon decided to dress as a hussar and wear false mustaches. Since he was confident in his beauty, he didn’t mind making himself ugly. In the days before the ball, Rosa’s friends spent their time dressing up. Manon liked to dress up as a boy and dance with other girls, playing the man. Alvarito watched her, marveling at her liveliness and graceful petulance. Alvaro had a pierrot costume sewn at home. On the day of the party, Manon had just dressed as a hussar, in which costume she looked very beautiful, and Alvarito, as a pierrot, when Morguy and Rosita arrived, both in a terrible mood. Morguy looked as if she had been crying. “What’s the matter?” Manon asked them. “Girl, we’re all messed up and we don’t know how to dress up,” Morguy replied. “Well? ” “Don’t you think my skirt is too long? ” “Yes, yes; there’s no doubt about it.” “Well, everyone at home insists it isn’t. This costume of mine is a mess. Our mothers say we’re fine and that there’s no time to change. ” Manon looked at her two friends, one after the other. “It’s true,” she said to Morguy. “Your skirt is too long and the waist is too high, and Rosita’s hair and bonnet are all wrong.” “But will we have time to change?” asked Rosa. “Yes. Let’s see, Alvarito,” shouted Manon. “Tell Baschili to bring me some pins and a needle. ” Alvarito ran to get the pins and needle. Manon knelt before Morguy and undid a few stitches. Then she fastened them here and there, lowered the waistline of the dress, and in half an hour had arranged the skirt admirably. “Now put a little blush on your cheeks and leave a few curls on your forehead.” Morguy did as he was told and acknowledged that he had gained a great deal. “Now you,” he said to Rosita. “Let your hair down right away. ” “But they told me at home that this was the hairstyle at that time. ” “But that’s nonsense; you shouldn’t pretend to be a historically accurate mannequin, but rather strive to look your best. ” “Naturally!” exclaimed Morguy. This girl is stupid. She’s stupid. She doesn’t understand anything. I’ve told her a thousand times. Manon took off her cousin’s bonnet and lightened the hat by removing some ornaments. Rosa changed her hair and did as she was told and put a little rouge on her cheeks. “How am I?” Rosa asked Alvarito. “Very well, very well. Much better than before. ” “Well, then, let’s go,” exclaimed Manon, quickly getting ready. They put on coats and capes and went out into the street. “Girl, what a pity you’re not a real hussar!” said Morguy to Manon, grabbing his arm, “You’d be irresistible.” Alvarito laughed. They entered Lissagaray’s house. The living room was already full. The three friends made a great impression. Only Sonia Volkonsky could compete with them, dressed as a gypsy, with a colorful silk dress, a short skirt, a red scarf on her head, necklaces around her throat, bracelets on her arms, and a tambourine in her hand. Among the men, there were some curious costumes: Pierre D’Arthez was dressed in a very elegant suit with a muscadine from the Directory; Montgaillard, as a Neapolitan bandit; the Viscount of Saint Paul, as Harlequin; there was also a Chinese man and a black man, and the one who provided the comic relief was a herbalist from Madame Lissagaray’s neighborhood, Paschal Joliveau, who was dressed as Robinson Crusoe. Robinson Crusoe wore a suit made of tree leaves, a hat and parasol made of the same material, and a real parrot on his shoulder. Many jokes were made at the herbalist’s expense; but he was pleased to see that he was attracting attention. There was dancing, talking, and laughing, and everyone, in general, was very happy. The friends were shocked when, as Montgaillard walked away from Manon, the Viscount de Saint-Paul approached the girl and began to court her. The viscount had a strong temper and spoke little. He had acquired the habit of being cold, indifferent, and slightly mocking. The viscount was a serious, handsome man, a little taciturn for his age and not at all fond of foolish and insane conversation, like Montgaillard. Saint-Paul had aplomb; he probably believed himself to be something great, and was not mortified or offended by the sight of a woman standing next to him without saying a word. Perhaps in a case like this he believed the fault lay with the woman at his side and not his own. “The Viscount is very well,” Morguy said to Manon, “but he will be a master to his wife. ” “Bah! I’m not worried. I don’t have to marry him. ” “Who knows?” Saint Paul and Montgaillard, friends of the previous evening, looked at each other like rivals, with great contempt, and became increasingly hostile. Manon danced with several young men, and as they passed a group, Montgaillard once said aloud: “These women who are capable of dancing for three or four hours are not much different from cooks.” She heard him and replied: “Men who insult women are not much different from footmen.” Young Montgaillard blushed. Aviraneta had heard Manon’s remark and stood up. “Have they insulted you?” he said. “I won’t allow it.” “Thank you, Don Eugenio,” she replied, laughing. “It’s a phrase we read in a novel today, and I repeat it.” Montgaillard looked impertinently at Aviraneta, and Aviraneta grew cocky, as in his heyday, and looked disdainfully at the young man. During one of the breaks in the ball, Montgaillard tried to get an explanation from Manon and stopped her in the corridor; but she violently pushed him away in disdain. Aviraneta sat down among the elderly gentlemen, a little surprised at the young man’s impertinence. He saw that Manon was being courted by Saint Paul and that Sonia, the Countess of Hervilly, was talking a great deal with the Chevalier de Montgaillard. A very brilliant quadrille was danced, and when it was over, Madame Lissagaray called for her guests to go into the dining room for something to drink. At this moment, the Countess of Hervilly approached Don Eugenio. “Be wary of your friends, Monsieur d’Aviraneta,” she said. “Are you going to tell me my fortune, beautiful gypsy? ” “Yes, one day they’re going to upset you. Perhaps the best thing you can do is leave here. ” “Is that serious?” he asked, astonished. “What do you mean by that, madam? ” “All your plans are known. ” “Are you involved in politics? ” “No; it’s true that I’m a Carlist, but I have other reasons to hate you. ” “Hate! Against me! I don’t know you. ” “Well, I do know you. ” “Me?” “Yes. ” “Is this a joke? ” “No. ” “Then that deserves an explanation. ” “Not here. ” “At the hotel, if you like. Whenever you like. ” “I’ll be there in an hour. ” “Very well. ” “Go to my room. I’ll wait for you. ” “What could this be?” thought Aviraneta. “What could there possibly be in common between that woman and him?” Aviraneta went into the dining room, from the dining room to the parlor, watched the dancing, and when he saw the Countess de Hervilly taking her leave, he got up after a short while and quickly went to the inn. He went into his room, hesitated, put a loaded pistol in his pocket; then he changed his mind and left it in the table drawer; he went down to the first floor, knocked on the Countess’s room, and, upon hearing someone say ” Come in,” he went inside. The Countess was sitting on a sofa, still in her gypsy costume. She wore magnificent jewels, diamonds on her fingers that flashed with color, gold bracelets with emeralds, and a pearl necklace. She looked something like a priestess. “Sit down, Don Eugenio,” she said. Aviraneta sat down. Before such splendid beauty, the conspirator, old, thin, small, dressed in black, looked like a crow. “I’m sure you’re intrigued by this appointment,” she exclaimed. “That’s true. ” “And perhaps frightened. ” “You don’t know me, Countess,” Aviraneta replied, smiling. “Haven’t you brought weapons?” “Why? I don’t think you want to fight me. ” “I could have prepared an ambush for you. ” “Well, in a hotel! Now, if you want to tell me why you’re calling me… ” “I need to hear an explanation from you. ” “I need explanations too. ” “You knew my father in Mexico. ” “I knew your father!” “Yes.” “What was his name?” “Ladislao Volkonsky. ” “Is that possible? Are you Volkonsky’s daughter? ” “Yes; I am the daughter of Volkonsky and Coral Miranda. Of Coral Miranda, whom you slandered. ” “It’s false,” Aviraneta shouted. “You disrupted the wedding. ” “It’s false too.” At this moment, the Count of Hervilly and the Chevalier de Montgaillard entered the room . Aviraneta became defensive, disdainful, and haughty. “What are you shouting?” the Count asked. “It’s all right, gentlemen,” said the Countess. “Señor Aviraneta is explaining himself to me. ” The two men looked at Don Eugenio, and he looked them up and down with disdain. “Go away,” the Countess repeated. The two men left, and Aviraneta, seeing them leave, continued speaking. “Yes,” he said, “Volkonsky was a friend of mine, and I loved him. Volkonsky didn’t know you existed.” Besides, Volkonsky wanted to marry her mother. She was the one who didn’t want to, because he was poor. “You’re lying,” she exclaimed. “I’m not lying. What interest could I have in lying? ” “Legitimating your behavior. ” “My behavior! It’s legitimized. As I say, it was she who didn’t want to marry him. She was rich, from a proud and influential family; he, although of princely Polish lineage, was nothing more than a poor adventurer in Mexico; she was the one who didn’t want to join her life with that of the Pole, and when your father married a simple and modest girl, your mother set a trap for him and had him killed and had his hand cut off. ” “Inventions. ” “No, truths. I have seen the severed hand. I have seen your father’s corpse on the Miranda estate. ” “My mother was an angelic woman.” “She was a diabolical and perverse woman.” “You are the diabolical and perverse one, Aviraneta. I know the whole truth. My mother told me the whole truth. ” “Tell that truth so I can refute it. ” “My mother told me that she had known Volkonsky as a child and that he had seduced her. While she was pregnant with me, my father, Volkonsky, became a partner with several Spaniards to exploit some mines, and then a A Spaniard, who was courting my mother and whom she despised, spoke to Volkonsky, deceived him, told him that she had had lovers, and, not content with this, murdered him and stole the mine plans. That Spaniard, do you know who he was? It was you, Mr. Aviraneta. “All of that is a web of lies, worthy of the one who invented them,” Aviraneta cried. “None of it is true. A lie, all a lie, and a thousand times a lie. There are still relatives and companions in Mexico who will still remember Volkonsky’s story. We’ll ask them. But there’s no need. In Bordeaux, there’s a Spanish merchant who lived in Mexico at that time, a certain Zangroniz. We’ll go see him, we’ll question him. He knows Volkonsky’s story and mine… But even that isn’t necessary, because I have letters from Coral Miranda, which are from after Volkonsky’s death. ” “Do you have letters from my mother?” “Yes, and from your father as well,” Aviraneta replied excitedly. “Now tell me when, where, and before what witnesses you want me to show you those letters. Are you a friend of the Spanish Consul? Isn’t that true? ” “Yes. Very well. In three days, before the Consul, I will show you those letters; let your husband, the Count, go; I will bring another witness. Do you have any letters from your mother?” Don Eugenio asked. “Yes. ” “Take them so we can compare the handwriting. Until then, truce.” The Countess of Hervilly, very pale, murmured: “Very well. See you in three days.” Aviraneta, who was livid, bowed mechanically and left the room. The next day, Aviraneta was in Bidart and took a packet of letters from his archives. Three days after the interview, he summoned the Countess to the Consulate. The meeting was cold and ceremonious; The Count of Hervilly and Señor Mazarambros were present as witnesses . The Countess appeared at the appointed time. She was dressed in a gray suit and wearing her pearl necklace. Aviraneta, before the consul and the two witnesses, slowly and calmly explained what the Countess was accusing him of. “Is this what you accuse me of?” he asked the Countess, after giving a detailed account. “Yes. ” “Have you brought any letters from your mother? ” “Yes. ” “Do you want to check whether the handwriting in the letters I have is the same as the one the Countess has?” Mazarambros, Hervilly, and Gamboa compared the handwriting. It was the same. “Now, read them aloud.” As the reading began, emotion left Sonia profoundly pale, which made her even more beautiful; her dark blue eyes shone more brilliantly, and her hands trembled. Then, when she was able to control her emotion, her face calmed, her cheeks regained their color, and she returned to her normal appearance. The letters were devastating. In two of them, Coral Miranda assured her beloved Eugenio that she had never had any love, not even friendship, with Volkonsky; that the Pole was a wretch who had tried to abuse her when she was a child; that she didn’t know what had become of Volkonsky and that she was waiting for Eugenio full of anxiety and love. The Countess listened to these letters, weeping. “It’s false, false,” she exclaimed angrily several times. “No, no,” her husband told her; “it’s true, there’s no doubt about it. ” “Now, if there is still any doubt,” exclaimed Aviraneta, “I have letters here from him, from Volkonsky. Do you want to see them?” The Countess didn’t reply. The Count took one of the letters, read it slowly, and returned it to Don Eugenio. “My dear,” he said coldly to the Countess, “this matter is settled. Señor Aviraneta has been slandered. Señor Aviraneta is an honorable person, and we must recognize that and give him credit. ” “We all agree with the words the Count has said, ” Gamboa replied. Aviraneta bowed and, as he left, said to the Countess: “I do not seek, madam, your friendship; I was a friend of your father, who was a noble and generous man. As I say, I do not seek your friendship; but I believe you have no right to hate me.” “You were my mother’s enemy,” murmured the Countess, pale and ashen. “That’s enough for me.” Aviraneta had won the game and left the Consulate hall, pale, smiling an ironic smile. For some time the Countess de Hervilly did not see Aviraneta. She and her husband changed hotels, which pleased Don Eugenio. After a couple of months, the Countess reappeared at Madame Lissagaray’s house. Aviraneta did not speak to her; but she approached him. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten what passed between us . ” “I understand,” said Don Eugenio. “The fact that you knew my father and my mother draws me to you. I never knew my father; I saw my mother only three times in my entire life. Was she beautiful? ” “Very beautiful. ” “And you didn’t love her? Because if you had loved her, you would have forgiven everything. ” “What do you want, Countess?” When I was in Mexico, I was still young, but not a lovelorn boy. I had fought six years in the War of Independence, traveled the world, and been on the verge of being shot several times. I was no young man. “But my father had fought in the war with Napoleon. No? ” “True; but he was a more naive man, more of a poet, more of a child. ” “Gooder than you. ” “Yes, certainly better than I; I won’t deny it. ” “You are implacable. ” “Implacable, no. ” “Yes, implacable. ” “And she, wasn’t she? She persecuted me, she persecuted her father with ferocity. She had that vengeful and spiteful streak of Creoles. She hated the Spanish, like all the Mirandas. ” “I hate them too. ” “With reason? ” “Yes. ” “What reasons could you have? ” “The cruelties of the Spanish toward the Indians. ” “Bah! And who did them?” The Spaniards who stayed in Spain, or the Spaniards who went to America and became Americans? The latter are the children of the conquistadors, of those who did all the good and all the bad things the Spaniards have done in America. It’s ridiculous that they now disguise themselves in Indian skin … Perfectly ridiculous. They are ashamed of having Indian blood and want to pass themselves off as their heirs. –You have been very cruel. –And haven’t the Yankees, in the modern era and coldly committed as many barbarities against the Indians as the Spaniards? And the English, who have exterminated entire races? And the French, who, after the revolution and all the nonsense about liberty, equality, and fraternity , have been the largest suppliers of black meat in America? Bah, I laugh at that! –I am American, and I see the Spaniards as the enemies of my country. –It’s a concern. That whole American epic of Independence is false. –That’s what’s convenient for you to say. –No. It’s reality. The independence of America was a civil war between the Spanish colonies and the Spanish sent by the Monarchy. The Indians, the truly American ones, were those who didn’t take part in the fighting. What’s more, there were almost always more Indians in the royalist armies than in the republican ones. In the Battle of Ayacucho, for example, the number of Indians was greater among the Spanish than among the Americans. What did the Indians care about independence? Ultimately, they only changed masters. “Let’s not talk about politics.” “You’re right. Let’s not talk about that. I think you’ve convinced yourself that my behavior toward your mother was neither treasonous nor disgraceful. If I had been an adventurer, I would have married Coral Miranda. She was rich; I was poor. ” “It’s just that you didn’t love her! Poor mother! I don’t know if I’ll forgive you, Aviraneta. I don’t know. ” “You’ll forget me, Countess. You have a great future ahead of you.” I’m already old, and I don’t think I’ll be in your way, nor do I intend to. We’ll see. Young Montgaillard, seeing the Countess talking with Don Eugenio, looked at the two of them with distrust. What strange whim could she have for conversing with that somber and gloomy man? “Some people are jealous that you’re talking to me,” Aviraneta said, smiling. The Countess looked at her interlocutor attentively and stood up. A short while later, Alvarito approached Don Eugenio. “Señor Aviraneta,” he said. “What’s going on? ” “Do you want to come with me to my employer’s house? ” “What’s going on? ” “Chipiteguy has disappeared.” Don Eugenio took his overcoat and went with Alvarito to the house at Reducto. It had been a whole day since the old man had appeared anywhere. Manón and Alvarito had been going around asking for the old man. Andre Mari and Tomascha were busy complaining and saying that they had already foreseen this misfortune. At the horse-rental stables, they wondered if the rag-picker had taken one to do some shopping in the surrounding area. He went to see Automendy, a car rental dealer at the Puerta de España, an acquaintance of Chipiteguy; all the old man’s friends were contacted. Nothing yielded any results. The next day, the police were notified. Chipiteguy’s disappearance from the house at the Reducto produced a great stir among his acquaintances. There was talk of Freemasonry, of a secret republican society called the Seasons, which perhaps had given him a commission; someone brought up the Jesuits. Days and days passed, and there was no news. Chipiteguy had definitely disappeared. PART FIVE THE KIDNAPPING OF CHIPITEGUY Chapter 28. AT THE INZOLA REGATTA. One winter morning, three men crouched behind a large rock at the beginning of an oak grove near Vera, in a place called the Inzola Regatta, watching for someone to pass. The place where the men were lying in ambush, solitary and gloomy, was a large ravine, through the middle of which runs the old road from Vera to Saint-Jean-de-Luz, a narrow road that some say is a Roman road, although people call it Napoleon’s, because they suppose the Emperor of the French ordered it built to pass his cannons upon entering Spain. This ravine, lined with large oak trees and damp, dark corners of scrubland, slopes toward France. From some points, the green sea can be seen between the rocks of the coast. A stream runs along its bottom, collecting water from the slopes of Mount Larrun and joining the small river called the Nivelle, which flows into the sea at Saint- Jean-de-Luz. The road that connects Spain and France in this direction curves, climbing the heights; in places, the old flagstones of the road are well preserved; in parts, it is broken and destroyed and overgrown with brambles. That morning when the three men, positioned behind a rock, were preparing an ambush, the sky was dark, with ink-colored clouds; large drops of rain fell on the piles of dry leaves; the wind whistled and moaned, and the narrow road was muddy, more deserted and deserted than usual. In some places, the stream flooded the causeway for a distance of fifty or sixty meters. There was no one around. Sometimes, Carlist parties came along these twists and turns to guard the border, and the red berets of the Chapelgorris were also frequently seen. The three men spying at the entrance to the Inzola oak grove were Bertache’s brother, nicknamed Martín Trampa; the latter’s servant, who was called Malhombre; and a companion in their adventures, Perico Beltza or Perico el Negro. Martín Arreche had two nicknames: one, the name of his house, Bertache, a nickname shared by both his brother Luis and him; The other, Martín Trampa, was already quite significant in itself. Martín, thickset, strong, and muscular, was a man of audacious air, with a round face, prominent cheekbones, dark, somber eyes, thin lips, and a sly expression. His observant, underhanded, and ironic manner of looking betrayed him when he tried to appear candid and innocent. Martín was a bold, determined, and cruel man; one could tell of his courage and energy. Martín’s profession, at least the one he publicly practiced, was that of a cattle dealer. He lived in his parents’ house, called Bertache, in Almandoz, with his wife, children, sister, and mother. Martín rarely stayed home; he was frequently seen on the roads, riding a horse, wearing his black blouse and carrying a cane, the Basque _maquilla_, with the strap in his hand. His servant, secretary, or confidant, Juan Echenique, alias Malhombre, was worthy of his master in every way. He also lived in Almandoz, where he had a small shack and a large family, and he openly confessed that since he was a child he had had a decided penchant for theft. “This house must be very poor,” he once said, referring to a farmhouse where he had been. “Why? ” “Because I haven’t found anything there to steal.” Malhombre had a face as sharp as a knife, a suspicious and Machiavellian expression. He had very sinister intentions. It was said in the village that during his youth he had been a peaceful and humble young man. Shortly before the war, he had been a servant to a muleteer, and he traveled with a pack of cattle from the French border to Pamplona and back. During the war, he rebelled. When he learned there were troops in the country, he stole a shotgun from the house of a wealthy farmer in Almandoz and took to the mountains to join Sagastibelza’s forces. A peasant, seeing him from the farmhouse, leaned out of the half-door of the entrance and asked him with some sarcasm: “Hello, Malhombre! How are you? Traveling?” Malhombre didn’t answer; he put his rifle to his face, shot the peasant, left him dead, and continued walking. Malhombre was one of those revolution or war types, obscure aspiring thugs and murderers who live a resigned and peaceful life for many years, then one day feel like wild beasts and kill, steal, or slit throats, astonishing those who know them, who can’t believe that it’s normal for them to be wild beasts, not calm and peaceful men. Since the war, Malhombre’s sinister personality has been evident. A year or two after going to the countryside, he was imprisoned in France, for reasons unknown, and there in prison he must have met criminals who taught him their ways. Malhombre lived above the village, as a former bandit captain might have lived . He fed his cow in the neighbors’ fields, picked beans, potatoes, or tomatoes from nearby vegetable gardens, and occasionally stole a chicken or a lamb. Malhombre prowled at night and terrorized the village. Any boy or girl who found him at dusk on the road cutting grass in a field that didn’t belong to them would flee upon seeing him, and Malhombre would threaten him with his scythe, because he liked to terrorize people. It was said that Martín Trampa, Malhombre, and Perico Beltza, with another accomplice who lived at the Odolaga inn, near Pamplona, used to station themselves at the top of Velate, masked or with their faces blackened so as not to be recognized, and would wait there to rob travelers . They had two mules, which they loaded with stolen goods, and in one night Malhombre would travel ten or twelve leagues across the fields and leave the stolen goods in a safe and unsuspected place, far from the scene of the crime. For this, naturally, the three men needed accomplices, and they had them, they claimed, among people of position, who guarded the proceeds of the robberies. No one suspected who these accomplices could be. Some claimed that the three men were not content with stealing, but sometimes also killed. Martín Trampa and Malhombre specialized in robbing cars. It was said that for this task they posed as Carlists, and that they and Perico Beltza were joined by a girl, Malhombre’s daughter, who usually dressed as an officer, with his uniform, saber, and white beret. This girl, Puri, was a very slender, blonde, and pretty girl. Puri played his part and immediately returned home. The girl treated her father with respect; to her, Juan Echenique wasn’t a bad man, but a good man. Although Martín and his family went to court several times, they never proved anything wrong. The three partners chose the darkest nights for their exploits. Malhombre was a nightjar: he saw as well at night as during the day, and this coincidence helped him navigate and escape in the middle of the countryside in the darkest of darkness. It was suspected that he was something of a witch and knew mysterious remedies and spells. Malhombre had a very intelligent and thieving dog, Erbi. It was said that Erbi, with a better heart than his master, spent a night when Martín Trampa, his servant, and Perico Beltza killed a traveler, howling plaintively for a long time near the corpse. Malhombre always carried a puzzle he had made, consisting of a palm-long pole with a lead ball attached to the end. This was one of his favorite weapons, which he wielded with great skill. As for Perico Beltza, he was a strong, heavy, and very unintelligent man , a smuggler since childhood. They called him Perico Beltza, or Black Perico, because of his dark complexion. Of the three men ambushed, Martín was like a tiger, a man of great strength, great energy, and great cruelty; obstacles existed for him, and if he had to cross pools of blood, he passed determinedly and without fear. Malhombre was like a wolf, cautious and gloomy, a friend of darkness, of nocturnal adventures, who was hampered by sunlight ; Malhombre loved the enigmatic, the secret, terrifying and sinister jokes , showing his mask or his sooty face better than his own face, slipping into the shadows. Perico Beltza was heavy, ill-tempered, and clumsy as a cattle dog… The three sinister figures had been crouching for over an hour behind a rock at the head of the Inzola ravine when a man was seen in the distance, mounted on a mule, preceded by another man leading the mule with a rein in his hand, and followed by a third. The man riding the mule was wearing a cape, and the man in front, leading the beast by the halter, was dodging puddles; the man in the rear, undoubtedly watching the prisoner, was carrying an open umbrella. The man riding on horseback was Chipiteguy; the man leading the mule by the halter was Claquemain, and the man following behind with an open umbrella was Frechón. Upon spotting the group, Martín Arreche, alias Martín Trampa, poked his head out of hiding and made a gesture of intelligence to Frechón. “Look around here to see if there’s anyone,” Martín said to Malhombre and Perico Beltza. The two men slipped away and went from one side to the other to keep watch. Martín approached Frechón. “Hello, friend! ” “Hello! ” “Is this the old man?” he asked. “This is him. ” “What are you planning to do with him? ” “Isn’t there somewhere nearby you can take him for now? ” “Well, I’ve spoken to the owner of a hamlet called Churinborda. He could be taken there, as long as the old man doesn’t protest, because if not, the man will get alarmed. ” “Listen, Chipiteguy,” said Frechón. “What’s up?” murmured the old man. ” We’re going to take him to a nearby hamlet to settle our affairs. I don’t think you’re going to come at us shouting. ” “I’m not in the habit of shouting,” answered Chipiteguy calmly. “It wouldn’t be good for you either,” replied Frechón. If these fanatics find out that you stole a treasure of crosses and monstrances from the churches of Navarre, I won’t tell you what will happen to you. ” Chipiteguy murmured, “You accompanied me on the task; but that doesn’t matter; let’s go as soon as possible to the village. ” The old man mounted on the mule continued ahead, led by Claquemain. The other men followed behind. “So this old man went to Pamplona and took out barrels full of gold and silver?” asked Martín. “Yes.” “How temperate! ” “And he promised me a part and didn’t give it to me. ” “I would have done the same,” said Martín. Frechón looked at Martín with some suspicion. “Now I’ll pay for this,” the Frenchman murmured. “I don’t care that he kept the crosses. I laugh at sacrileges. What I won’t forgive him for is that he deceived me. ” “What do you plan to do?” asked Martín. “We’ll take him to that nearby hamlet, where he’ll write a letter to his family in Bayonne asking them to give us a good sum of money. ” “Who will go with the letter?” said Martín. “We’ll see.” They continued walking, preceded by Chipiteguy, mounted on the mule, to the Churinborda hamlet. When they reached the gate, Frechón helped Chipiteguy dismount. “I don’t advise you to protest,” the Frenchman told him, “because then they’d hand you over to the Carlists as a thief of church crosses and shoot you on the spot. ” “And what would that gain you?” Chipiteguy asked calmly. “Nothing; that’s why I’m not doing it; but I’m warning you; what I want is a good ransom as compensation and nothing more. ” “I’m willing. How much? ” “We’ll see now, and I’ll tell you. I have to know what these helpers are trying to get. ” “All right.” “Mr. Chipiteguy, you’ve lost the game. ” “Yes, I can see that.” “Let it serve as a warning to you, and don’t try to deceive Frechón again . Old Frechón always has the last word.” Chipiteguy entered the farmhouse kitchen and sat by the fire to dry himself, watched by Claquemain, while Frechón, Martín Trampa, Malhombre, and Perico Beltza discussed what they should do. After long discussions, they set the ransom at thirty thousand francs: fifteen thousand for Frechón and Claquemain, and fifteen thousand for Martín Trampa and his family. Frechón thought what they were asking was excessive, but it wasn’t a good time to object. Chipiteguy would be forced to write the letter. Who would carry it? How would the money be deposited, and who would collect it? No one trusted each other. Martín, who saw Chipiteguy talking a lot with Claquemain in the farmhouse kitchen, told Frechón that it didn’t seem prudent to leave the old man in a house so close to the border, because he could find any opportunity to escape and easily sneak into France. “What do you think should be done?” asked Frechón. “Intern him.” This Malhombre has a sexton friend in Almandoz, who is a relative and accomplice of his. The sexton lives in a house with a tower. The old man could be put there. “How far is it from here to Almandoz? ” “About five leagues. ” “Good; let’s take him there.” Malhombre took it upon himself to drive him on the mule, at night, through the twists and turns he knew. Frechón believed he was handling his business perfectly. Chipiteguy was determined not to protest. Martín Trampa and his men didn’t know French, and Frechón planned to cleverly deceive them and keep the entire ransom as soon as things turned out well. However, when Frechón arrived in Almandoz and saw that Martín Trampa was a petty king there, and that everyone obeyed him out of fear, he thought his business wasn’t going so well and that perhaps he had been imprudent. Old Chipiteguy had been put on the top floor of a large mansion and was being watched there. Chapter 29. FRECHÓN’S MANEUVERS. When Matías Frechón realized that old Chipiteguy had played a trick on him in the Pamplona affair, he thought, sooner or later, of taking revenge. The opportunity was bound to present itself sooner or later, and, indeed, it did. Frechón quickly hatched a plan that seemed superb to him. To carry it out, he needed determined and brave accomplices; Roquet, by then, was already under Aviraneta’s orders, dedicated to political maneuvers; Cazalet, the bohemian, was only a man for city intrigues; lazy and drunk, he could only act in the corner of the café or the tavern. Frechón, who spied on all the Spaniards who came to Bayonne, learned that Gabriela la Roncalesa was visiting the Iturri inn and conferring with Aviraneta. Frechón introduced himself to the girl and told her he had some business dealings with the Carlists, and that, to resolve them, he needed an intelligence officer who was familiar with Don Carlos’s supporters. Gabriela spoke of her boyfriend, Luis Arreche; she said he was a second lieutenant in the 5th Battalion of Navarre and knew some important figures in the party. Frechón asked Gabriela if he couldn’t speak with Second Lieutenant Arreche somewhere, and she replied that a week later her boyfriend would be in Vera and that he could meet with him there. Frechón entered Spain and spoke with Luis Arreche, whom they called Bertache after his house. Frechón told Luis about the trick Chipiteguy had played on him in Pamplona and confessed that he was planning to set up an ambush to extract some or all of the money the old man had earned from the cross business. Luis Arreche warned him that he couldn’t stay on the border for long , and that, to prepare the ambush against Chipiteguy, the best thing he could do was contact his brother Martín. Frechón sent a message to Martín Arreche, alias Bertache, alias Martín Trampa; the two spoke, came to an understanding, and agreed on how to seize the old ragpicker, kidnap him, and extract his money. Frechón returned to Bayonne and sounded out Claquemain. Claquemain was a drunkard who had no affection for anyone. With the promise of money, he decided to betray his master. The two men tricked Chipiteguy, telling him about a weapons purchase at the Inzola inn. Claquemain and the old man went to Saint-Jean-de-Luz by carriage; there, Chipiteguy rented a mule to take them up to the Inzola inn. At the Inzola inn, Frechón and Claquemain appeared, forcing him to continue onward and taking him to the end of the oak grove, where Martín Trampa, Malhombre, and Perico Beltza were waiting. Two days after Chipiteguy disappeared, Frechón appeared at the house at Reducto in Bayonne. He told Manón and Andre Mari that he had been in Dax and expressed great astonishment at Chipiteguy’s disappearance. Later, in the shop, in front of Alvarito and some customers, he claimed that Chipiteguy had been tricked and taken to Spain by Carlist priests after learning that he had taken crosses and monstrances from Pamplona. “What monstrances?” Alvarito asked. “You’re an idiot who doesn’t understand anything,” Frechón told him. When the old man was with us in Pamplona, he brought back silver and precious stones, which he must have stored here. Alvarito was astonished and spoke with Manón about the Pamplona treasure, and one day they decided to search the cave. Alvarito was making arrangements to find out Chipiteguy’s whereabouts and went to see María Luisa de Taboada to see if she could give him any information. María asked him if he knew Don Eugenio de Aviraneta. Alvaro said he did. “Then go see him.” Aviraneta was then living at the inn in Francia. Alvaro explained to Don Eugenio what had happened: the disappearance of Chipiteguy and Claquemain. Aviraneta made Alvaro tell him everything he knew. Alvarito recounted the incidents of the trip to Pamplona: how they had entered the city; how the boss had told his servant to wait for him in Valcarlos, and how later, instead of going via Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Bayonne, he had gone to San Sebastián and embarked here with his wax figures. “You don’t suspect anyone?” Aviraneta asked him. “No. ” “Not even Frechón? ” “I consider that man capable of anything, but it seems that these days of Chipiteguy’s disappearance he was in Dax. ” “Who knows! Perhaps this is nothing more than an alibi.” Aviraneta promised young Sánchez de Mendoza that he would put all the means to find out Chipiteguy’s whereabouts, assuming the old man was in Spain. Chipiteguy’s friends, very surprised by his disappearance, made a thousand guesses; some believed it was a fantasy on the part of the old man, that he had left home on a whim; others believed he was kidnapped, and still others, that he was dead. About two weeks after Chipiteguy’s disappearance, Alvarito received a letter, which he went to read to Manón and Andre Mari. The letter read as follows: My dear friend: They have brought me to Spain and are holding me prisoner. To set me free, they demand two thousand ounces. Go see Manasés León with this letter, and he will provide you with the indicated amount. You will have it ready to deliver immediately to the emissary who will appear there shortly with a letter from me from the border, which will be addressed to Don Alvaro Sánchez de Mendoza and signed Juan Dollfus. We mustn’t notify the Spanish police, because they can’t do anything here for now, and the denunciation could cost me my life. Tell Manón that I’m fine and that I’m always thinking about her. Your friend, Chipiteguy. Alvarito did what was instructed in the letter and waited with the money in the till for the emissary to appear, but he never did. A week later, Manón received another letter, telling him that his grandfather was in prison, and that if he wanted to see him free, he should send a bill for fifteen thousand francs, payable in Elizondo, in the name of Juan Echenique, from Almandoz; that he shouldn’t notify the justice system, because they wouldn’t be able to do anything against the old man’s kidnappers and because if they knew they were being denounced, they could kill him. Manón and Alvarito consulted with Manasés, and he said it was imprudent to send the money without guarantee, because Echenique could keep it and not free Chipiteguy. The three of them decided to write to Echenique, indicating that they were sending him a payment note for fifteen thousand francs to be collected at the home of Rodríguez and Salcedo in Bayonne, adding that they would pay him as soon as Chipiteguy was free anywhere on the French border. As this letter also yielded no results, Alvaro went back to visit Aviraneta, who gave him a letter for Luis Arreche, alias Bertache. In it, Don Eugenio told him to find out who had kidnapped Chipiteguy and where; to tell the kidnappers not to ask for more than they had, because the old man wasn’t as rich as they said, and that, even if he were, perhaps there were people in the old man’s own family who would be interested in Chipiteguy’s disappearance. “No, there’s nothing of the sort,” said Alvarito. “Certainly not,” replied Aviraneta. But it’s an argument for somewhat scoundrel people, who distrust everything except evil intentions. Alvarito prepared to go to Spain to see Bertache. Before leaving, Aviraneta called him. He had learned from Gabriela la Roncalesa that Martín Trampa, Luis Arreche’s brother, was one of those involved in Chipiteguy’s kidnapping. Martín lived in Almandoz, and Aviraneta thought they could write to him directly. They wrote to him. Alvarito and Manón decided to wait a week, in case Martín Trampa answered; but he didn’t… Chapter 30. THE TREASURE. One night Tomascha and Andre Mari woke Alvarito up. They had clearly heard that there were people in the cave. “Get up!” the two women told him. Alvarito got up, trembling with fear, and dressed as quickly as possible. “Let’s see who it is,” he said, feigning serenity in his voice. “No, no,” replied Andre Mari, “what we have to do is lock ourselves in this apartment. Manon is asleep. ” “It would be better to call the guard of the Redoubt,” murmured Tomascha. ” We can shout from the window. ” “No, no,” said Andre Mari, “lest it turn out to be some cat and they make fun of us and think we’re crazy old women.” At the sound of voices, Manon woke up and appeared on the stairs, asking what it was about. “There are people in the house,” her aunt told her. “Then let’s see who it is.” The girl put on a dressing gown, picked up the lantern she used to do her night patrol with her grandfather, and began to walk resolutely down the stairs. Alvarito followed her with a club in his hand; the women, seeing the two boys so determined, also followed them down the stairs. Manón and Alvarito searched the shop, the storerooms, and the courtyard but found no one. “Perhaps the thief has locked himself in the cave.” They entered the cave. In the light of the lantern, they saw the wax figures leaning against the wall with a strange air. The sackcloth that covered the group of Assassins had fallen, and the young Assassin was sticking his arm out, armed with his dagger. The presence of those repugnant wax figures renewed Alvarito’s obsession; They terrified him, and in the middle of the night, in the cave, the flickering light of the lantern almost terrified him more than if they were real thieves who had broken into the house. Upon returning to bed, Alvarito admitted to himself that, although he had apparently recovered, deep down he had been very afraid. He was simultaneously ashamed of his cowardice and amazed at his moments of courage. The next day, when Alvarito went to his office, he could see signs of footsteps in the courtyard. It had rained the night before, and there were still boot prints and the mud had dried. It was no illusion, then, that there had been people inside the house during the night, but a fact. Now, he didn’t understand where they had entered and where they had left , because there were no footprints in the entrance hall and the door had been bolted this morning. Alvaro wondered if the thieves, or whoever they were, had climbed down the courtyard wall, or perhaps through the roof. All this filled Alvarito with fear. Andre Mari and Tomascha were greatly alarmed to learn that the men had indeed entered the house and decided that Quintin and a Zouave cousin of his would go and sleep in the warehouse. This cousin of Quintin’s was Max Castegnaux, supposedly Chipiteguy’s son, who had risen to the rank of sergeant in the Algerian army and was retired and had a posting at the town hall. Max Castegnaux, tall, broad, strong, corpulent, and large, had a martial air and a slightly bulging forehead. Max sported a mustache and sideburns. He wore a top hat with very wide brims, a frock coat with long, narrow sleeves, and a rush hanging from the button of his waistcoat. Quintin and Castegnaux slept in the back room on cots, each with a loaded pistol within easy reach. Max and Quentin considered placing two or three wax figures in corners, in odd places, to scare off anyone who tried to enter the house. The men’s guard wasn’t very effective. Apparently, Quentin and Castegnaux each carried their bottle of wine into the back room, and after playing a game and drinking the wine, they would go to sleep and snore like saints. Not even a cannon shot would have woken them up. A few days after the noises and the alarm, and after Castegnaux and Quentin had begun guard duty in the back room, Frechon, feeling offended to see that Alvarito was given more importance than him in the house, took his leave. Manon told Alvaro that, since they couldn’t fear Frechon’s spying, they had to see what Grandfather had hidden in the cave. The two of them went with a lantern and noticed a place where the earth had been disturbed. They dug there and began to reveal bars of silver, painted black, and pieces of gold, wrapped in rags. In the hole, there was also a small pitcher. “What’s in there?” Alvaro wondered. “Let’s see, empty it.” Alvaro emptied the pitcher onto the ground, and out came a mass of emeralds, sapphires, and topazes. In the light of the lantern, the stones sparkled with a thousand gleams. “It’s a treasure,” Alvaro murmured. “Yes, but we can’t touch it,” said Manon. “Oh, no! Of course not. We’ll put it back the way it was.” Alvarito filled the jug with the precious stones and buried it again. Suddenly he thought someone was watching him; but it was one of the wax figures. When they left the cellar, he and Manón thought they were leaving the cave of Ali Baba and his forty thieves. The existence of the treasure influenced Alvarito’s imagination. He supposed that, just as in the old tales there was a dragon guarding a treasure and a princess, here the wax figures were the watchmen. He, Alvarito, would end up being the dominator of the ugly figures, the Orpheus of the motionless beasts, the tamer of the disgusting and repugnant specters, and after defeating them, he would flee with the princess and the treasure. A few days later, he dreamed that he was standing in front of a door firing shots at someone who wanted to break into the house. Chapter 31. THE ELDERLY PEOPLE AT MADAME LISSAGARAY’S GATHERING. Much was said among the friends about Chipiteguy’s disappearance. At Madame Lissagaray’s gathering , the case was discussed at length, and, above all, the elderly and thoughtful people discussed and expressed their opinions. There were a variety of hypotheses. The majority considered the kidnapping to be politically motivated, and, depending on their ideas, some blamed the Carlists and others the Masons. Some didn’t believe it was a matter of political maneuvering, but rather personal motives. One of those who accused Frechón of being the perpetrator, or at least an accomplice, of the kidnapping was Pascual Joliveau, the Robinson Crusoe of the St. Martin’s Day ball. Joliveau had his herbalist’s shop on the ground floor of Madame Lissagaray ‘s house . Joliveau was a bachelor in his thirties, thickset, blond, pale, heavy, and beardless, with large ears and enormous hands. He also had a stutter. Joliveau made money from his shop. He was a hard worker and somewhat meddlesome in matters of medicine. He believed he knew a lot, and so did the people in the neighborhood. His enemies said that since a doctor lived on the same street who had once denounced Joliveau for trespassing, and whom Joliveau hated, he had placed an advertisement in the shop that read: Herbalist: Not to be confused with the charlatan across the street. The anecdote was completely false. Joliveau had a great dislike for the doctors and apothecaries of the time because they were beginning to use mainly chemical remedies and neglecting simple ones. The herbalist boasted of curing all illnesses with angelica, valerian, throbbing marigold, and gentian. Sometimes he recommended juniper, rue, or ergot to some girls; but he had been nearly prosecuted for one of these recommendations and had been very prudent ever since. Joliveau made all kinds of poultices, sold toothbrushes, and enemas. Joliveau, despite being very stingy and suspicious, had welcomed into his house a man named Doyambere, a bankrupt former watchmaker and an old concoction maker, who claimed to possess magnificent mines in Spain and treasures in the bank, probably as real as the mines. Alvarito found Joliveau to be a wax figure. He reminded him of Fualdés from Chipiteguy’s collection. Joliveau was a very suspicious and very miserly man; the only fire in his house was lit in the kitchen, and only a small one. To legitimize himself during the winter, he found that wherever a fire was lit it was too hot. Joliveau kept everything he found in his house or on the street: old keys that wouldn’t open any doors, balls, pieces of candle, hairpins, and so on. Joliveau believed in nothing but people’s evil intentions, and yet they always tricked him. At that time, he was being tricked by Doyambere, the mysterious man; the crazy watchmaker, who had fooled everyone into believing he owned mines and treasures, and who probably didn’t have a penny. Doyambere had been the Bohemian watchmaker; for many years he had traveled through France, Spain, and Italy on foot, repairing watches. He recounted extraordinary stories about his travels: witchcraft, crimes, mysteries, and horrors. Doyambere was a kind old man, very refined, very discreet, very sensible, who had kind words for everyone, but who did not inspire confidence. Joliveau fed Doyambere and kept him at home in the hope of inheriting from him. Sometimes he was indignant at the wastefulness of the old mystifying watchmaker, and once when Doyambere, at dessert, had removed the rind from the cheese, which was undoubtedly very thick, Joliveau said, stammering more than usual, unable to contain himself: “That… also… costs… me… money. It’s… inconsiderate… to waste… cheese like that.” Joliveau had an old maid; but he did all the cooking himself. One of the manifestations of Joliveau’s filth was his hatred of cats, no doubt because of what they stole. “It’s an unpleasant animal,” he would say, “that has no respect for other people’s property . ” Joliveau used to put traps on cats and, when he caught them, he would hang them. There was one in his neighborhood, owned by an old spinster, black and bold, that would enter the herbalist’s house through the courtyard. Finally, Joliveau caught it, hanged it, and one day hung it as a trophy in front of the window for the neighbor to see. Joliveau courted Mademoiselle Recur, without realizing that the young lady was in love with Marcello, Chipiteguy’s nephew. She had a real horror of the herbalist. Joliveau, a man with a strange and confused mind, didn’t say things like everyone else; he was incoherent, and sometimes hard to understand. He made allusions to distant things, and many said that, upon hearing him, they wondered, hesitantly: Could he be a man of great talent? Could he be an idiot? The majority decided to believe him an idiot. One could find in him a strange mixture of qualities: self-sufficiency, boasting, and impertinence, combined with a certain loyalty by some people. Perhaps none of his feelings reached the highest note; but it was also certain that there was little worthy of estimation in the motley of his soul. Joliveau, from the very beginning of Chipiteguy’s disappearance, had accused Frechón. Joliveau had resentments toward the latter. He had wanted to do a somewhat usurious business with him, and Frechón had deceived him. “I am going to send that… filthy… Frechón,” he said, “I am going to send him… to enjoy… the… economic… governmental hospitality… There he will be fed with… cabbages, with water, and with… other similar ingredients.” For Joliveau, government hospitality was like prison. Someone once told him: “That Frechón would sell his soul to the devil. ” “He’d… win,” Joliveau replied quickly; “he’d sell a piece of junk… for a few… coins.” The stuttering herbalist also liked to distort the names of people he disliked or who had deceived him. That’s what he called Frechón Frechoneau, Frechonato, or Frechonazo. To the campaign waged against him, Frechón responded with even greater acerbity. According to Frechón, all the herbs Joliveau sold were poisonous and necessarily fatal. It was unknown what the herbalist did with them—whether he urinated, spat, or something worse—but their effect was terrible. Taking marshmallow, chamomile, or cordial flowers from Joliveau’s house and beginning to feel nauseous, vomit, and facing death was immediate. Frechón would play on words with Joliveau’s surname, Bello Becerro, and ask his acquaintances: “What is Bello Becerro doing? Are they taking him to the slaughterhouse, or does he have dropsy from the weeds he eats at home? Has he seen the vet yet?” Frechón claimed that Joliveau was crazy, that he had been deranged by meningitis he had suffered in childhood. He also said that as a child, a pig had castrated him. That’s why, according to Frechón, Joliveau was beardless and looked like a singer in the Sistine Chapel. That’s also why he had a fondness for cooking and washing dishes. These malicious murmurs reached Joliveau, who was now indignant and now calm. “Here in Bayonne… you know,” he said, rubbing his large hands together. “The five-cent newspaper… without paper… circulates a lot in the city. ” This phrase meant, in the herbalist’s confused language, that there was a lot of gossip in the town. With this way of speaking, hyperbolic and figurative, always making allusions to unknown things, he was hard to understand. Paschal Joliveau often planned to get married; but he was unsuccessful. “I don’t know… whether to get married… or to buy a… batch of herbs.” In the end, he always had to buy the herbs. Frechón said everywhere that Joliveau wanted to get married because he was very fond of being cuckolded. Joliveau sometimes approached the group of girls at Lissagaray’s social gathering, but they paid no attention to him; Manon treated him with profound contempt, Rosa listened to him distractedly, Morguy laughed shamelessly at him. “El Bello Becerro” couldn’t find his ideal calf, Frechón would have said; only Alvarito listened to the herbalist; the latter would often say to him: “Believe me… If you want to find… the old man, trip … Frechonazo. ” Another of those consulted several times was Father Aranalde, a priest friend of Madame Lissagaray. Aranalde was an old man with a rosy face, white hair, a gaze that was sometimes lively but always obscured by drooping eyelids; mocking lips and a long nose, often filled with snuff. Aranalde assumed academic postures, and did so with such affectation and so well that, more than a priest, he seemed like a comedian marvelously playing the role of an ecclesiastic. Aranalde neither affirmed nor denied anything; Anything could be possible, and the various versions of Chipiteguy’s disappearance seemed very possible to her. Another of the oracles at Madame Lissagaray’s gathering was Mr. Silhouette, a retired undertaker and resident of Chipiteguy. Silhouette, an old man with a wig and a shaved face, had a cold, indifferent, sphinx-like expression . His profession had undoubtedly given it to him . All his life, he had done nothing but go to houses where a death had occurred, day or night, and attentively and coldly display his catalogs and labels, his first-class or second-class burial prices, always with icy severity and indifference. They said Mr. Silhouette had been tricked by the woman. Mr. Silhouette took his wife to a small country house on the Bayonne road and locked her there until she died. He had the pleasure of seeing in his catalogs what kind of coffin and funeral furnishings his dear wife needed to make her grand journey to the depths of Mother Earth. Mr. Silhouette always walked in a frock coat, his mouth pursed, his pale, thin lips, his hollow cheeks, his eyes fixed and hard, his tie stiff around his neck, his forehead broad, and his gaze cold. Silhouette was undoubtedly a funerary, feretral, and pantheonic man. He was methodical and meticulous in everything, a great believer in etiquette, and he would not tolerate any neglect of it. It was said that Mr. Silhouette was Joliveau’s father; but he bore no resemblance to him, and it must have been a joke played by ill-intentioned people. Mr. Silhouette was a legitimist, but he didn’t want to admit it. Alvarito found him very similar to the Fouché of the wax figures; an older, less dressed-up Fouché. Monsieur Silhouette did not give his opinion on Chipiteguy’s disappearance; he contented himself with hearing all the details and nothing more. There were other old gentlemen in the company; Monsieur Castera, who had been a solicitor, who walked arm in arm with his wife, dragging his feet, and who was playing his game of cards. Monsieur Castera had crooked legs, a wrinkled, pale face, a head bald at the temples, and a sunken forehead. There was something reptilian about him. He dressed in an old-fashioned way. Monsieur Castera took snuff, wore a beautiful wig, and He had a disagreeable falsetto voice. But his voice couldn’t be considered the most unpleasant aspect of his personality . Old Castera was a very courteous man, which didn’t prevent him from saying the most unpleasant thing to each person, the thing that could upset or hurt them the most, with exquisite finesse. At the same time as he said something poisonous, he would offer the victim his snuffbox with the enameled lid, smiling kindly. Speaking ill of people, taking snuff, and eating sweets were his principal vices. Alvarito heard that Mr. Castera, in his youth, had been a handsome man. In his old age, however, he was almost repugnant. It’s curious, this ugliness that occurs in the bourgeoisie, especially in merchants, industrialists, notaries, lawyers, and all those who live almost exclusively for money. It is not the ugliness of the common people, nor the ugliness of poverty, drunkenness, brutality, or base passions, but a sordid, cold ugliness, the expression of greed and commercial specialization . This ugliness contrasts with the beauty that is sometimes present in the countryman , the sailor, and, above all, the man of thought. Monsieur Castera knew Chipiteguy and Aviraneta and considered them both honorable people; but immediately after speaking of them and heaping all kinds of praise on them, he told, laughing, this anecdote: When Talleyrand was old and living in the Palace of Valencay, he had a friend as old as he, the Comte de Montrond. One day Talleyrand said to the Duchesse de Laval: “You know, Duchess, why I like Monsieur de Montrond. Because he has few prejudices.” To this, Montrond immediately retorted: “Do you know, Duchess, why I like Monsieur Talleyrand? Because he doesn’t have one.” No doubt the old ex-procurator meant that both Chipiteguy and Aviraneta were capable of anything. The acerbic old man’s companion was Monsieur Bedarride, a local shopkeeper, old, with a red, swollen face, a bulging nose, a long, drooping mustache, who almost always wore a frock coat and a scarlet waistcoat. Bedarride, with his coarse air, was a clever man and had made his fortune in the cloth trade. He was also commercially ugly and transcended cloth by a mile. Probably the emanations of the cloth he had breathed all his life had colored his soul, giving him an indelible clothier’s spirit. He reminded Alvarito of the man who shouted out the crime in the group of wax figures, who were called, at the Reducto house, the Assassins. Monsieur Bedarride, extremely wealthy, had a source of distress that made his life miserable. His only daughter, Lucia, was suffering from a bone marrow disease. Lucia Bedarride had an unpleasant, pimply asymmetrical face and a mixture of stupidity, anxiety, and malice. The doctor had told her father that perhaps, if the girl married, she could develop and change, and Monsieur Bedarride was looking for a husband for his daughter, thinking of winning him over by offering him a fortune. Lucia Bedarride, wicked and perverse, had nervous breakdowns; she hit the maids and, when she saw that young men wouldn’t approach her, she flew into fits of rage. Mademoiselle Bizot tried insidiously to show Alvarito that it would be a magnificent business for him to marry Lucia Bedarride; but Alvarito emphatically rejected the proposal. Bizot admitted that the girl had no charm; but there was plenty of money, and with money, one could find ways to compensate oneself. A woman like Bedarride and a beloved woman like her neighbor Nené were a perfect combination. Alvarito was astonished to hear a proposition of this nature. Chapter 32. FINAL HYPOTHESES. Another of Madame Lissagaray’s guests was M. de Viguerie, owner of the Hotel des Tres Reyes, on the Rue de Maubec in Saint Esprit. Viguerie was also known as an innkeeper. Viguerie cordially hated all foreigners because they did not go to his hotel; He could tolerate the Jews in the neighborhood due to his economic status, and since he was from central France, he disliked the Basques, who also didn’t go to his inn. Mr. Viguerie was well aware of the Carlist maneuvers ; he was a close friend of the schemer Manuel Salvador and a fierce enemy of Aviraneta. Viguerie, based on information from Salvador, stated that Chipiteguy was a victim of the Freemasons and that the family should steer their investigations in this direction . According to him, the best course of action was to address the sub-prefect so that he could request Chipiteguy’s release from the head of the lodge, or Grand Orient, of Bayonne. One lady who attended the meeting and made some efforts to ascertain Chipiteguy’s whereabouts was Madame Du Vergier. This madame claimed to be a relative of Du Vergier d’Hauranne, the famous Abbé de Saint Cyran, one of the most influential leaders of Jansenism during his time. Madame Du Vergier, old, tall, and manly, almost always walked the streets in slippers and leaning on a cane. She had been, during the time of the Empire, a woman of cheerful habits; but no one remembered her adventures anymore. Madame Du Vergier had a vice for the lottery and played the French and Spanish lotteries with such enthusiasm that sometimes she didn’t have anything to eat. This old woman reminded Alvarito of the Brinvilliers of the wax figures. Madame Du Vergier, with Bizot, had gone to see the fortune-teller Madame Canis, and she had told them with certainty and emphatic certainty that Chipiteguy was in Spain, kept in a tower, for a state crime. Thus concludes The Wax Figures, a work that not only offers us an intense and vibrant story but also confronts us with the masks that we all, at some point, choose to wear. Pío Baroja, true to his critical and disillusioned style, leaves us with a crude but honest vision of the human condition. We hope you enjoyed this literary journey and that the author’s reflections resonate with you beyond the last page. Thank you for joining us for Now on Stories. See you in the next story.
🕯️ *Las figuras de cera: novela* de Pío Baroja es una obra envolvente que combina el misterio, la crítica social y la introspección intelectual con maestría. En esta fascinante novela, Baroja construye un universo sombrío, poblado de personajes ambiguos, en el que las figuras de cera representan tanto lo artificial como lo inquietante de la condición humana.
📖 ¿Qué encontrarás en esta historia?
– Un narrador testigo de una sociedad decadente, atrapado entre lo real y lo simbólico.
– Ambientes cargados de tensión, como museos de cera y calles de un Madrid en penumbra.
– Reflexiones existenciales que desnudan el alma de los personajes y del propio lector.
– Una crítica sutil pero certera a la hipocresía social y al estancamiento cultural de la época.
✨ Esta novela breve pero intensa es ideal para quienes disfrutan de:
– Literatura psicológica
– Misterio con trasfondo filosófico
– Obras que combinan observación social y simbolismo
📚 Descubre esta joya literaria de uno de los grandes exponentes de la Generación del 98. Pío Baroja despliega su pluma afilada en una narrativa que, aunque breve, deja huella.
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