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Updated: June 22, 2025
They felt out of humor with these painters of the last batch proper, prudent, incapable of doing anything absurd, copying the fashions of the idle and presenting the appearance of State functionaries, clerks, who wielded the brush. His greeting over, Soldevilla fairly overwhelmed the master with his effusive praise. He had been admiring the portrait of the Countess of Alberca.
What surprises life has in store! The painter's coldness finally had its effect on the Alberca woman. She seemed to awaken from the dream, in which she was lulling herself. She drew back from her lover, and looked at him fixedly with imperious eyes, in which a spark of pride was once more beginning to flash. "Say that you love me! Say it at once! I need it!"
The Countess of Alberca took especial care to let every one know that her only relation with the painter was a friendship which grew constantly colder and more formal. "He's crazy," she said. "He's finished. There's nothing left of him but a memory of what he once was." Cotoner in his unswerving friendship was indignant at hearing such comment on the famous master. "He isn't drinking.
And he laughed as he heard her, just as all men laughed at what they called the "ways" of the Alberca woman. When Renovales won success and, as a famous master, returned to those drawing rooms through which he had passed in his youth, he felt the attraction of the countess who in her character as a "woman of intellect," insisted on gathering celebrated men about her.
Now that he is almost an old man, he's doing what he didn't do in his youth in his fever for work and glory." Many people were laughing at him already, divining his passion for the Alberca woman, that love without practical results, that made him live with her and Monteverde, acting as a good-natured mediator, a tolerant kindly father.
She took his arm but instead of following him, she dragged him among the people who crowded around her daughter until at last, seeing the Countess of Alberca, she stopped. Her prudent friend trembled. Just what he thought she was looking for the other woman. "Josephina, Josephina! Remember that this is Milita's wedding!" But his advice was useless. Concha, seeing her old friend, ran toward her.
Her body was the only thing he did not know; her inner life he possessed as did none of her lovers and he began to feel tired of this possession. When he finished reading these letters, he would always think the same thing. "She is mad. What do I care about her secrets?" A week passed without any news from Biarritz. The papers spoke of the trip of the eminent Count of Alberca.
His expression of indifference was repeated when he heard the Countess of Alberca mentioned. Cotoner described her alarm and astonishment at the master's behavior. She had sent for him to find out about Mariano, to complain, with tears in her eyes, of his absence. She had twice been to the door of his house and had not been able to get in; she complained of the servant and that mysterious work.
The corks popped two and three at a time, in ceaseless crossfire. Renovales ran about like a servant, loaded with plates and glasses, going back and forth from the crowded tables to the corners where some of his friends were seated. The Alberca woman assumed the airs of a mistress; she made him go and come with constant requests. On one of these trips he ran into his beloved pupil, Soldevilla.
Cotoner, in his blind devotion to his idol whom he considered irresistible, supposed that the Alberca woman was madly in love with the master and shook his head sadly. "This will have a bad end, Mariano. You ought to break with her. The peace of your home! You are piling up trouble for yourself." The letters were always alike; endless complaints at his short absences.
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