which he had witnessed, and in which, yielding to the desires of Alberto, the orphan had permitted herself to be kissed, the very heavens seemed to fall; he raged at seeing his love mocked and dragged in the mud, and promptly told Doña Pancha all he had learned. The old woman strove to calm him; made just remarks about Carmen’s origin, telling him that she might have inherited the tendency to evil from her mother and the desire for luxury, which had been her perdition; she begged him to cut completely loose from the orphan, and, fearful that he might, after the first impression caused by what Angelito described had passed, involve himself in humiliating love entanglements, appealed to her son’s generous sentiments, not to again think of the girl. And she succeeded.
Gabriel armed himself with courage and fulfilled his promise. Hard, most cruel, was the interview; his heart said: pardon her. Offended dignity cried: despise her. Love repeated: she loves you; is repentant, have pity on her; see how you are trifling with your dearest illusions, with all your hopes; but in his ears resounded his mother’s voice, tender, trembling with sympathy, supplicating, sad, Gabriel, my boy, if you love me, if you wish to repay me for all my cares, if you are a good son, forget her! He loved her and he ought not to love her. He wanted to despise her, to offend her, to outrage her, but he could not. He loved her so much! Wounded self-esteem said with stern and imperious accent: leave her.
When the cabinetmaker left his home that night, wishing to escape from his grief, almost repenting what he had done, wandering aimlessly, he journeyed through street after street, without note of distance. The main street of the city, broad and endless, lay before him, with its crooked line of lamps on either side, obscure and dismal in the distance. So the future looks to us, when we are victims of some unhappy disappointment, which shakes the soul as a cataclysm,—with not a light of counsel, not a ray of hope on the horizon.