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Updated: June 3, 2025
The doctor was promising herself to do great things here.... I was thinking that in no place would it be easier for me to find you again." She had gained a little more bodily strength. Her hands were touching Ferragut's knees, longing to embrace them, yet not daring to do so, fearing that he might repel her and overcome that tragic inertia which permitted him to listen to her.
The great swimmers, supplied with formidable mandibles and immense and elastic stomachs, prefer the fortunes of war, the pursuit of living prey, and devour, as the carnivorous devour the herbivorous on land, all the little feeders on débris and plancton. This word of recent scientific invention presented to Captain Ferragut's mind the most humble and interesting of the oceanic inhabitants.
The first day they presented themselves on board arrayed in their uniform; then they returned in civilian clothes in order to habituate themselves to being simply merchant officers on a neutral steamer. The two knew by hearsay, of Ferragut's former voyages and his services to the Allies, and they understood each other sympathetically without the slightest national prejudice.
The high voice of the tenor, as though it were an echo of Ferragut's thought, was singing a romance of the fiesta of Piedigrotta, a lamentation of melancholy love, a canticle of death, the final mother of hopeless lovers. "All a lie!" said Freya, laughing. "These Mediterraneans.... What comedians they are for love!..." Ulysses was uncertain as to whether she was referring to him or to the singer.
Because he couldn't come to blows with the man, and because he could not stand seeing him laugh deceitfully while watching him wait hour after hour in the vestibule, he took up his station in the street, spying on Ferragut's entrances and exits. The three times that he did succeed in speaking with the captain, the result was always the same.
Her scrutinizing glasses appeared to be searching Ferragut's very soul, as though doubtful of his fidelity. Then she would become more affectionate in the course of these banquets, composed of cold meats with a great abundance of drinks, in the German style.
"Take it! Take it!" And she sprinkled the precious perfumes as though they were water on Ferragut's hair, over his curled beard, advising the sailor to close his eyes in order not to be blinded by this crazy baptism. Anointed and fragrant as an Asiatic despot, the strong Ulysses would sometimes revolt against this effeminateness. At others, he would accept it with the delight of a new pleasure.
No matter what he might do when he became a man, he could never hope to equal this triumphant creature who had given him existence.... When the boat, on its return from Naples, arrived at Barcelona without its owner, Ferragut's son did not feel any surprise. Toni, who was always a man of few words, was very lavish with them on the present occasion.
Caragol preached morality to Ferragut's son, morality from his standpoint, interrupted by frequent caresses of the glass. "Esteban, my son, respect your father greatly. Imitate him as a seaman. Be good and just toward the men that you command.... But avoid the females!" The women!... There was no better theme for his piously drunken eloquence. The world inspired his pity.
The most valorous and calm men would swear upon seeing the endless bar of mist closing off the horizon. Such voyages were not at all to Ferragut's taste.
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