Impelled by this necessity, he took his hat and cane and went out into the street. Thence, avoiding every one he knew, he passed on into the country, plunging into the leafiest and most sequestered recesses of the gardens and walks that encompass the village, and make, for a radius of more than half a league, a paradise of its surroundings.
We have said but little, thus far, concerning the personal appearance of Don Luis. Be it known, then, that he was in every sense of the word a handsome fellow--tall, well formed, with black hair, and eyes also black and full of fire and sweetness. His complexion was dark, his teeth were white, his lips delicate and curling slightly, which gave to his countenance an appearance of disdain; his bearing was manly and bold, notwithstanding the reserve and meekness proper to his sacred character. The whole mien of Don Luis bore, in a word, that indescribable stamp of distinction and nobility that seems to be--though this is not always the case--the peculiar quality and exclusive privilege of aristocratic families.
On beholding Don Luis one could not but confess that Pepita Ximenez was aesthetic by instinct.
Don Luis hurried on with precipitate steps in the course he had taken, jumping across brooks and hardly glancing at surrounding objects, almost as a bull stung by a hornet might do. The countrymen he met, the market-gardeners who saw him pass, very possibly took him for a madman.
Tired at last of walking on aimlessly, he sat down at the foot of a stone cross near the ruins of an ancient convent of St. Francis de Paul, almost two miles from the village, and there plunged anew into meditation, but of so confused a character that he himself was scarcely conscious of what was passing in his mind.
The sound of the distant bells, calling the faithful to prayer and reminding them of the salutation of the angel to the Most Holy Virgin, reaching these solitudes through the rarefied atmosphere, drew Don Luis at last from his meditations, and made him once more conscious of the world of reality.
The sun had just sunk behind the gigantic peaks of the neighboring mountains, making their summits--in the shape of pyramids, needles, and broken obelisks--stand out in bold relief against a background of topaz and amethyst--for such was the appearance of the heavens, gilded by the beams of the setting sun. The shadows began to deepen over the plain, and, on the mountains opposite to those behind which the sun was sinking, the more elevated peaks shone like flaming gold or crystal.