"What a pretty room you have,ñaltaMartayMarí child. It's like a silver cup! What a lovely white little bed!"
"Ricardo, don't be inquisitive. Go away; come, Menino isn't here!"
The girl felt annoyed by the young man's curiosity. Every woman of gentle birth feels a certain modesty, if we may say so, in regard to her room, for the reason that there clings about it something like the essence of her very self which she hesitates to let a man approach; but in Marta's case, in addition to this modesty, there was a sense of shame in having her stubborn, childish fancies brought to light, like that of keeping things bright, that of placing the bottles of her dressing-table in a sort of symmetry worthy of an altar, and other such things which served her family as subjects for merriment at dinner time. Consequently she tried to push him out by main force.
"Come Ricardo; there's nothing to see here. Come along, come along!"
"Do let me, niña, do let me have a look at this charming room! How exquisite!" And putting his nose to the bed, he said with great seriousness, "It smells like Marta!"
"Will you be quiet, you foolish fellow!"[34]
"It may not give you any trouble to keep your room in this way, but let me tell you, child, I couldn't keep it so if my life depended on it. If you were to see my room, Martita!"
"Yes, yes, it must be fine! You always were a disorderly fellow.[35] But come, dear, come; let us go!"
"We'll go whenever you please. My room is a stable compared with this; but just consider that it's open to dogs and cats, the gardener, with his dirty feet, the coachman, with the smell of the stable, and, in fact, to every living creature. It is not my fault."
From Marta's room they passed through various other apartments, the dining-room, the parlor, the gallery of the court, another private room, and a few others, without finding Menino anywhere. As they were standing in the midst of a passage-way without knowing whither to turn, an idea suddenly struck Marta, and she said,--
"Let's go to the terrace; we haven't been there yet."
The terrace was now only a large hall tiled with marble and covered over with stained glass. It was called the terrace because it had been one in former times; but Don Mariano had had it closed in with glass a few years before, transforming it into a handsome, fantastic room in Moorish style, where he went to drink coffee on summer evenings with his daughters and friends. It was for the most part unfurnished, having only in one corner three or four small marquetry tables and a few rockingchairs. When our young people reached this hall, they found it flooded with light: the sun, that morning leaving his long seclusion, came forth bright and warm, resolved on visiting all the corners of the city; and when he found the thousand crystals of the Elorza terrace, not caring to see anything better, he passed through them and revelled inside with a lively, eager pandiculation which occupied the whole circuit of the room. It was a magical sight. Thousands of rose, green, yellow, purple, gray, and blue lights burned within it, pouring over the floor, the ceiling, and the walls, and dissolving into an infinity of tints, delighting and dazzling the eyes. Over the mosaic pavement fell a shower of blinding rays, reflecting up in a delicate, many-colored vapor; and these rays were crossed and interwoven in the air, making a flame-bearing web, subtile and beautiful, through the interstices of which passed the intangible scintillations of other rays more diaphanous, from which arose a vapor still more aerial. And these veils of dust, of rays, of scintillations, and of colors, stretching one behind the other, in spite of their transparency scarcely allowed you to see with vague indefiniteness, as through a mist, the crystals and arabesques of the windows. The sun squandered his treasures of light and color like a Turkish pasha within the walls of some chamber in the East, proving once more that when he endeavors to make a brilliant and fanciful decoration with them, there is no stage director with all his spangles, _Bengalas_, and curtains who can equal him.