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Updated: June 8, 2025
These triumphs were announced by telegraph in the Party papers, which, to garnish the chief's glory and avoid suspicion of "inspiration," always began the article with: "According to a despatch printed in the Metropolitan press ..." "What a boy!" the priests of Alcira would say to doña Bernarda. "What a silver tongue! You'll see; he'll be a second Manterola!"
As she passed the Brull door on her way to church, she would greet his mother; and doña Bernarda would remark in a patronizing way: "Doña Pepa is a very fine woman; one of God's own souls.... The only decent person in her family." "Yes; I remember; I remember doña Pepa," said Rafael. "Well, your 'foreigner," don Andrés continued, "is doña Pepa's niece, daughter of her brother, the doctor.
And to emphasize the words, as Rafael, humiliated and covered with dirt, was leaving the garden, she shut the gate behind him with such a violent slam that the bars almost went flying. Doña Bernarda was much pleased with Rafael.
The Doctor had one passion music; and everybody admired his talent for that art. What didn't the man know, anyhow? According to doña Bernarda and her friends, that remarkable skill had been acquired through "evil arts." It was another fruit of his impiety!
Rafael entered the dining-room, and there sat doña Pepita, poor old woman, heaped in an armchair, the wrinkles of her features moistened with tears and her two hands clutching a rosary. Cupido was trying vainly to cheer her with jokes about the inundation. "Look, auntie! This gentleman is the son of your friend, doña Bernarda. He came over here in a boat to help us out.
And some old woman would add, sententiously: "Bernarda, take good care of the child; don't let him use his brain so much. It's bad for him. See how peaked he looks!..." He finished his preparatory education with the Dominicans, taking the leading rôle in all the plays given in the tiny theatre of the friars, and always with a place in the first line on prize days.
Doña Bernarda, too, saw in this union the realization of her fondest dreams: money joined to power; the millions of a business, whose marvelous successes seemed like deliberate tricks of Chance, coming to revivify with their sap of gold the Brull family tree, which was showing the signs of age and long years of struggle! Spring had come on apace.
He attended to "the chief's" correspondence, and was tutor and playmate to the little Rafael, taking the boy on long walks through the orchard country. To doña Bernarda he was confidential adviser. That surly, severe woman showed her bare heart to no one in the world save don Andrés.
He was afraid of that ugly mob and was anxious to yield, as usual; but it would be a serious breach of etiquette not to consult "the chief." Fortunately, just as the huge, dark mass of human beings was beginning to surge in indignation at his silence, and hisses and shouts of anger were being raised, Rafael appeared. Doña Bernarda had sent him out at the first sign of uneasiness in the populace.
"Well, if they're fond of each other," said the rustic magnate, "the wedding can take place tomorrow so far as I'm concerned. Remedios means a good deal to me; hard to find a girl like her for running a house; but that needn't interfere with the marriage. I'm mighty well satisfied, doña Bernarda, that we should be related through our children.
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