At the same time she drew from her stays one of the formidable whalebones then in vogue.
The child drew back in alarm, but the needlewoman caught her by the arm.
"Don't think of escaping, for then you will come in for a double share."
Josefina seized her hand, weeping bitterly.
"Don't beat me, for God's sake, Concha! You know my godmother beat me yesterday. Look, look at my hands. My head also hurts me. The ground was so hard. I love you very much. I have never blamed you to godmother."
"Silence! silence!" returned the sempstress, trying to disengage herself gently from the little hands. "There is nothing to be done but obedience. The señora gives the order."
"No, por Dios! Concha, no, por Dios!" replied the little creature between her sobs. "I love you very much, and godmother too. If you don't beat me I will give you my box of sheep."
"And the little cupboard with the mirror?"
Concha gave signs of giving in. The child looked at her with anxious eyes.
"Very well," she said, in an affectionate, condescending tone; "then if you promise to be good, and you don't tell the señora, and you give me all that you say, then--then--go on child!"
And in one instant she pulled her clothes off and began to beat her unmercifully, laughing like a mad woman with delight.
The screams of the child reached the second floor. The wife of the Grandee was standing before the glass arranging her hair. She stopped. A singular shiver ran through her, a certain indefinable, vague emotion like a tickling sensation that one can't with certainty term pleasant or unpleasant. Anyhow it was something that modified that insufferable fever that the frenzy of rage had raised in her heart. She stood motionless until the cries had ceased. Her eyes shone, her pulse beat higher.
It is thus they say that the heart of a wild beast beats at the sight of its victim. It was the commencement of the child's martyrdom. Under the weakest pretexts she inflicted the cruellest punishments, giving evidence of an imagination so fertile that it would have delighted the executioners of the Holy office. Not only did she strike her for the most innocent offences and pinch her and bite her, but she delighted in keeping her in continual dread of dreadful punishments, and so making her suffer day and night. She made her go barefooted into the garden on the coldest mornings to fetch her a flower, or she kept her whole hours with her head in the sun to keep the birds from picking at a currant bush. She made her sleep on the ground by the side of her bed, when she sent her several times down into the kitchen for water. She reduced her to eating food she knew she did not like, and deprived her of what she knew she liked.