First Love | Page 4

ivory plate. As I pressed my lips to the painting I could scent the slight fragrance of the border of hair, I imagined to myself even more realistically that it was a living person whom I was grasping with my trembling hands. A feeling of faintness overpowered me, and I fell unconscious on the sofa, tightly holding the miniature.
When I came to my senses I saw my father, my mother, and my aunt, all bending anxiously over me; I read their terror and alarm in their faces; my father was feeling my pulse, shaking his head, and murmuring:
"His pulse is nothing but a flutter, you can scarcely feel it."
My aunt, with her claw-like fingers, was trying to take the portrait from me, and I was mechanically hiding it and grasping it more firmly.
"But, my dear boy--let go, you are spoiling it!" she exclaimed. "Don't you see you are smudging it? I am not scolding you, my dear.--I will show it to you as often as you like, but don't destroy it; let go, you are injuring it."
"Let him have it," begged my mother, "the boy is not well."
"Of all things to ask!" replied the old maid. "Let him have it! And who will paint another like this--or make me as I was then? Today nobody paints miniatures--it is a thing of the past, and I also am a thing of the past, and I am not what is represented there!"
My eyes dilated with horror; my fingers released their hold on the picture. I don't know how I was able to articulate:
"You--the portrait--is you?"
"Don't you think I am as pretty now, boy? Bah! one is better looking at twenty-three than at--than at--I don't know what, for I have forgotten how old I am!"
My head drooped and I almost fainted again; anyway, my father lifted me in his arms on to the bed, and made me swallow some tablespoonfuls of port.
I recovered very quickly, and never wished to enter my aunt's room again.
AN ANDALUSIAN DUEL
Serafin Estebanez Calderon
Through the little square of St. Anna, towards a certain tavern, where the best wine is to be quaffed in Seville, there walked in measured steps two men whose demeanor clearly manifested the soil which gave them birth. He who walked in the middle of the street, taller than the other by about a finger's length, sported with affected carelessness the wide, slouched hat of Ecija, with tassels of glass beads and a ribbon as black as his sins. He wore his cloak gathered under his left arm; the right, emerging from a turquoise lining, exposed the merino lambskin with silver clasps. The herdsman's boots--white, with Turkish buttons,--the breeches gleaming red from below the cloak and covering the knee, and, above all, his strong and robust appearance, dark curly hair, and eye like a red-hot coal, proclaimed at a distance that all this combination belonged to one of those men who put an end to horses between their knees and tire out the bull with their lance.
He walked on, arguing with his companion, who was rather spare than prodigal in his person, but marvelously lithe and supple. The latter was shod with low shoes, garters united the stockings to the light-blue breeches, the waistcoat was cane-colored, his sash light green, and jaunty shoulder-knots, lappets, and rows of buttons ornamented the carmelite jacket. The open cloak, the hat drawn over his ear, his short, clean steps, and the manifestations in all his limbs and movements of agility and elasticity beyond trial plainly showed that in the arena, carmine cloth in hand, he would mock at the most frenzied of Jarama bulls, or the best horned beasts from Utrera.
I--who adore and die for such people, though the compliment be not returned--went slowly in the wake of their worships, and, unable to restrain myself, entered with them the same tavern, or rather eating-house, since there they serve certain provocatives as well as wine, and I, as my readers perceive, love to call things by their right name. I entered and sat down at once, and in such a manner as not to interrupt Oliver and Roland, and that they might not notice me, when I saw that, as if believing themselves alone, they threw their arms with an amicable gesture round each others' neck, and thus began their discourse:
"Pulpete," said the taller, "now that we are going to meet each other, knife in hand--you here, I there,--_one, two_,--_on your guard_,--_triz, traz_,--_have that_,--_take this and call it what you like_--let us first drain a tankard to the music and measure of some songs."
"Se?or Balbeja," replied Pulpete, drawing his face aside and spitting with the greatest neatness and pulchritude towards his shoe, "I am not the kind of man either for La Gorja or other similar earthly matters, or because a