"Look at her! She is my sweetheart," he had said one morning to Margalida while she was cleaning his room. "Isn't she beautiful? She must have been a princess of Tyre or of Ascalon, I am not sure which; but the thing of which I am sure is that she was destined for me, that she loved me four thousand years before I was born, and that she has come down through the ages to seek me. She owned ships, robes of purple and palaces with terraced gardens, but she abandoned all to hide in the sea, waiting dozens of centuries for a wave to bear her to this coast so that Tío Ventolera might find her and bring her home to me. Why do you stare at me like that? You, poor child, cannot comprehend these things."
Margalida did, indeed, look at him in surprise. Imbued with her father's respect for this high-caste gentleman, she could only imagine him talking seriously. What things he must have seen in this world!
Now his words about this millenial sweetheart shook her credulity, causing her to smile nervously, while at the same time she looked with superstitious fear at the great lady of forgotten centuries who was nothing but a terra cotta head. How could Don Jaime talk like that? Everything about him was strange!
Whenever Febrer climbed up to the tower he sat down near the doorway and looked across the landscape. At the base of the hill spread recently ploughed fields, wooded areas belonging to Febrer which Pèp was clearing for cultivation. Then began the plantations of almonds, of a fresh green color, and the ancient and twisted olive trees, which lifted up their dark trunks with tufted branches bearing silver gray leaves. The house, Can Mallorquí, was a sort of Moorish dwelling, a cluster of buildings, all as square as dice, dazzling white, and flat-roofed. New white buildings had been added as the family increased, and as its necessities were augmented. Each of the dice constituted one room, and, taken together, they formed a house, which resembled an Arabian village. From without no one could guess which were the living rooms and which the stables.
Beyond Can Mallorquí lay the grove, and the high-banked terraces, separated by thick stone walls. The strong winds did not suffer the trees to grow tall, so they put out many luxuriant branches round about them, gaining in width what they lost in height. The branches of all the trees were upheld by numerous forked sticks. Some of the fig trees had hundreds of supports and spread out like an immense green tent ready to shelter sleeping giants. They were natural summer-houses in which nearly a whole tribe might be sheltered. The horizon in the background was shut out by pine-clad mountains, having here and there red, barren spots. Columns of smoke rose out of the dark foliage from the pits of the charcoal burners.