Mare Nostrum

Nostrum (Our Sea), by Vicente
Blasco Ibañez

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Title: Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) A Novel
Author: Vicente Blasco Ibañez
Release Date: March 24, 2004 [EBook #11697]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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NOSTRUM (OUR SEA) ***

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Mare Nostrum
(OUR SEA)

A Novel
By
Vicente Blasco Ibanez

AUTHOR OF
"The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," "The Shadow of the
Cathedral," "Blood and Sand," "La Bodega," etc.

Authorized translation from the Spanish by Charlotte Brewster Jordan
Translator of "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse"

1919

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
CAPTAIN ULYSSES FERRAGUT
CHAPTER II
MATER AMPHITRITE
CHAPTER III
PATER OCEANUS

CHAPTER IV
FREYA
CHAPTER V
THE AQUARIUM OF NAPLES
CHAPTER VI
THE WILES OF CIRCE
CHAPTER VII
THE SIN OF ULYSSES
CHAPTER VIII
THE YOUNG TELEMACHUS
CHAPTER IX
THE ENCOUNTER AT MARSEILLES
CHAPTER X
IN BARCELONA
CHAPTER XI
"FAREWELL, I AM GOING TO DIE"
CHAPTER XII
AHPHITRITE!... AMPHITRITE!

Mare Nostrum
CHAPTER I
CAPTAIN ULYSSES FERRAGUT
His first gallantries were with an empress. He was ten years old, and
the empress six hundred.
His father, Don Esteban Ferragut--third quota of the College of
Notaries--had always had a great admiration for the things of the past.
He lived near the cathedral, and on Sundays and holy days, instead of
following the faithful to witness the pompous ceremonials presided
over by the cardinal-archbishop, used to betake himself with his wife
and son to hear mass in San Juan del Hospital,--a little church sparsely
attended the rest of the week.
The notary, who had read Walter Scott in his youth, used to gaze on the
old and turreted walls surrounding the church, and feel something of
the bard's thrills about his own, his native land. The Middle Ages was
the period in which he would have liked to have lived. And as he trod
the flagging of the Hospitolarios, good Don Esteban, little, chubby, and
near-sighted, used to feel within him the soul of a hero born too late.
The other churches, huge and rich, appeared to him with their blaze of
gleaming gold, their alabaster convolutions and their jasper columns,
mere monuments of insipid vulgarity. This one had been erected by the
Knights of Saint John, who, united with the Templars, had aided King
James in the conquest of Valencia.
Upon crossing the covered passageway leading from the street to the
inner court, he was accustomed to salute the Virgin of the Conquest, an
image of rough stone in faded colors and dull gold, seated on a bench,
brought thither by the knights of the military order. Some sour orange
trees spread their branching verdure over the walls of the church,--a
blackened, rough stone edifice perforated with long, narrow,
window-like niches now closed with mud plaster. From the salient
buttresses of its reinforcements jutted forth, in the highest parts, great
fabled monsters of weather-beaten, crumbling stone.

In its only nave was now left very little of this romantic exterior. The
baroque taste of the seventeenth century had hidden the Gothic arch
under another semi-circular one, besides covering the walls with a coat
of whitewash. But the medieval reredos, the nobiliary coats of arms,
and the tombs of the Knights of Saint John with their Gothic
inscriptions still survived the profane restoration, and that in itself was
enough to keep up the notary's enthusiasm.
Moreover the quality of the faithful who attended its services had to be
taken into consideration. They were few but select, always the same.
Some of them would drop into their places, gouty and relaxed,
supported by an old servant wearing a shabby lace mantilla as though
she were the housekeeper. Others would remain standing during the
service holding up proudly their emaciated heads that presented the
profile of a fighting cock, and crossing upon the breast their gloved
hands,--always in black wool in the winter and in thread in the summer
time. Ferragut knew all their names, having read them in the Trovas of
Mosen Febrer, a metrical composition in Provençal, about the warriors
that came to the neighborhood of Valencia from Aragon, Catalunia, the
South of France, England and remote Germany.
At the conclusion of the mass, the imposing personages would nod
their heads, saluting the faithful nearest them. "Good day!" To these, it
was as if the sun had just arisen: the hours before did not count. And
the notary with meek voice would enlarge his