The Quest | Page 2

are sought and
never found; the hour, finally, of the chaste virgin's dreams and of the
venerable old man's rheumatism. And as this romantic hour glided on,
the shouts and songs and quarrels of the street subsided; the lights in
the balconies were extinguished; the shopkeepers and janitors drew in
their chairs from the gutter to surrender themselves to the arms of sleep.
In the chaste, pure dwelling of Doña Casiana the boarding-house
keeper, idyllic silence had reigned for some time. Only through the
balcony windows, which were wide open, came the distant rumbling of
carriages and the song of a neighbouring cricket who scratched with
disagreeable persistency upon the strident string of his instrument.
At the hour, whatever it was, that was marked by the twelve slow,
raucous snores of the corridor clock, there were in the house only an
old gentleman,--an impenitent early-riser; the proprietress, Doña
Casiana,--a landlady equally impenitent, to the misfortune of her
boarders, and the servant Petra.
At this moment the landlady was asleep, seated upon the rocking-chair
before the open balcony; Petra, in the kitchen, was likewise asleep,
with her head resting against the window-frame, while the old
early-rising gentleman amused himself by coughing in bed.

Petra had finished scouring and her drowsiness, the heat and fatigue
had doubtless overcome her. She could be made out dimly in the light
of the small lamp that hung by the hearth. She was a thin, scrawny
woman, flat-chested, with lean arms, big red hands and skin of greyish
hue. She slept seated upon a chair with her mouth open; her breathing
was short and laboured.
At the strokes of the corridor clock she suddenly awoke; she shut the
window, through which came a nauseating, stable-like odour from the
milk-dairy on the ground-floor; she folded the clothes and left with a
pile of dishes, depositing them upon the dining-room table; then she
laid away in a closet the table-ware, the tablecloth and the left-over
bread; she took down the lamp and entered the room in the balcony of
which the landlady sat sleeping.
"Señora, señora!" she called, several times.
"Eh? What is it?" murmured Doña Casiana drowsily.
"Perhaps you wish something?"
"No, nothing. Oh, yes! Tell the baker tomorrow that I'll pay him the
coming Monday."
"Very well. Good-night."
The servant was leaving the room, when the balconies of the house
across the way lighted up. They opened wide and soon there came the
strains of a tender prelude from a guitar.
"Petra! Petra!" cried Doña Casiana. "Come here. Eh? Over in that
Isabel's house ... You can tell they have visitors."
The domestic went to the balcony and gazed indifferently at the house
opposite.
"Now that's what pays," the landlady went on. "Not this nasty
boarding-house business."

At this juncture there appeared in one of the balconies of the other
house a woman wrapped in a flowing gown, with a red flower in her
hair. A young man in evening dress, with swallow-tail coat and white
vest, clasped her tightly about the waist.
"That's what pays," repeated the landlady several times.
This notion must have stirred her ill-humour, for she added in an
irritated voice:
"Tomorrow I'll have some plain words with that priest and those
gadabout daughters of Doña Violante, and all the rest who are behind in
their payments. To think a woman should have to deal with such a tribe!
No! They'll laugh no more at me! ..."
Petra, without offering a reply, said good-night again and left the room.
Doña Casiana continued to grumble, then ensconced her rotund person
in the rocker and dozed off into a dream about an establishment of the
same type as that across the way; but a model establishment, with
luxuriously appointed salons, whither trooped in a long procession all
the scrofulous youths of the clubs and fraternities, mystic and mundane,
in such numbers that she was compelled to install a ticket-office at the
entrance.
While the landlady lulled her fancy in this sweet vision of a brothel de
luxe, Petra entered a dingy little room that was cluttered with old
furniture. She set the light upon a chair, and placed a greasy box of
matches on the top of the container; she read for a moment out of a
filthy, begrimed devotionary printed in large type; she repeated several
prayers with her eyes raised to the ceiling, then began to undress. The
night was stifling; in that hole the heat was horrible. Petra got into bed,
crossed herself, put out the lamp, which smoked for a long time,
stretched herself out and laid her head upon the pillow. A worm in one
of the pieces of furniture made the wood crack at regular intervals.
Petra slept soundly for a couple of hours, then awoke stifling from the
heat.