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Updated: June 28, 2025
Nothing too small for Cupido to notice ever happened in Alcira. Every weakness, every foible of the city's celebrities was made public by him in his barbershop, to the delight of the Opposition, whose members gathered there to read their party organ.
He had been seen by several persons, in spite of his precautions. "Well, is the Hon. don Rafael Brull, member from Alcira, satisfied with his morning's work? Don't you think the laugh your enemies have raised deserves an encore!" For all his bitter sarcasm the old man spoke in a faltering voice, and seemed on the verge of tears.
"All I've been telling you boys, happened long before your day, and your parents, who knew the Doctor and his daughter, have always been careful not to bring this woman into their conversation; for, as Rafael's mother says, she's the disgrace of Alcira.
A portion of the Spanish army were cantoned in a village only some two miles from Alcira, and a few days later Peterborough determined to surprise it, and for that purpose marched out at night from Valencia with an English force of a thousand men, and reached the spot intended at daybreak as he had arranged.
New surroundings; continuous and petty satisfactions to vanity; the kow-towing of doorkeepers in Congress; the flattery of visitors from here, there and everywhere who came with requests for passes to admit them to the galleries; the sense of being treated as a comrade by celebrities, whose names his father had always mentioned with bated breath; the "honorable" always written before his name; all Alcira speaking to him with affectionate familiarity; this rubbing elbows, on the benches of the conservative majority, with a battalion of dukes, counts and marquises young men who had become deputies to round out the distinction conferred by beautiful sweethearts or winning thoroughbreds, all this had intoxicated him, filled his mind completely, crowding out all other thoughts, and persuading him that he had been completely cured.
The distinctions and the prizes that came to him in Alcira continued to pursue him in Valencia; and besides, don Ramón and his wife learned from the papers of the triumphs achieved by their son in the debating society, a nightly gathering of law students in a university hall, where future Solons wrangled on such themes as "Resolved: that the French Revolution was more of a good than an evil," or "Resolved, that Socialism is superior to Christianity."
It is also true that every five or six years the flood would shake houses loose from their foundations, destroy good farm land, drown people, and commit other horrible depredations all in obedience to the curse of Valencia's patron; but the saint of Alcira was the better man of the two for all of that!
The Honorable señor don Rafael Brull, member from Alcira, felt as much at ease as if he were in his own house when he entered that corridor, a dark hole, thick with tobacco smoke, and peopled with black suits standing around in groups or laboriously elbowing their way through the crowds.
Her first thought was to go back to Alcira at once, walk there if necessary, find the scamp somewhere, throw the letter into his face, beat him, claw him to pieces! "Ah, the wretch! The infamous, cowardly, unspeakable wretch!" she cried. Beppa had found a candle. She lighted it. And there her mistress was staggering, deathly pale, her eyes wide open, her lips white with anguish!
The orchard and the Blue House belonged now to Rafael's father-in-law, who had transferred to his own home the best of its equipment all the furniture and decorations that Leonora had bought during her period of exile, while Rafael had been in Madrid and she had thought of living the rest of her life in Alcira.
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