Doña Gertrudis,ñaltaMartayMarí wife of Don Mariano Elorza, the master of the house in which we find ourselves, is seated, or, to speak more correctly, is reclining, in an easy-chair at Isidorito's side. Although she had not yet passed her forty-fifth year, she appeared to be as old as her husband, who was now approaching his sixtieth. Not entirely lacking in her cadaverous and faded face were the lines of an exceptional beauty, which had given much to talk about there from 1846 to 1848, and which had redounded to her in a multitude of ballads, sonnets, and acrostics, by the most distinguished poets of the town, inserted in a weekly journal entitled _El Judio Errante_, which was published at that time in Nieva. Doña Gertrudis preserved with great care a gorgeously bound collection of _Judios Errantes_, and was in the habit of assuring her friends that if the young man who signed his acrostics with a V and three stars had not faded away with quick consumption, he would have been by this time the fashionable poet; and that if another lad, named Ulpiano Menéndez, who disguised himself under the pseudonym of _The Moor of Venice_, had not gone off to America to make his fortune in business, he would have been, at least, as great as Ayola, Campoamor, or Nuño de Arce. Don Mariano, her husband, shared the same conviction, although at another epoch the lyric poet, as well as the merchant, had caused him great anxieties, and not a few times had disturbed the peaceful course of his love; but he was a just man and fond of giving every one his due.
Doña Gertrudis was wrapt up in a magnificent plush comforter, and her head was covered with a net, underneath which appeared her hair turning from auburn to white. Her features were delicate and regular, and of a singularly faded pallor. Her eyes were blue and extremely melancholy. The marks of close confinement rather than of illness were to be seen in that face.
"This roaring in my ears is killing me, killing me. I cannot eat, I cannot sleep, I cannot get any rest anywhere."
"I think that you ought to stay in your room."
"That is worse, Isidorito, that is worse. In my room I cannot distract my thoughts. My mind begins to grind like a mill, and it ends by giving me a fever. I am much sicker than people give me credit for. They'll see how this will end. To-day I am so nervous, so nervous.--Feel my pulse, Isidorito, and tell me if I am not feverish."