s of Castro
Duro, with a house adorned with escutcheons, and an extensive stone
pool, deep and mysterious. The garden did not resemble that at Don
Calixto's house, for that one was of a frantic gaiety, and the one on
Amparito's father's estate was very melancholy. Above all, the square of
water in the pool, whose edges were decorated with great granite vases,
had a mysterious, sad aspect.

"Doesn't it make you very sad to look at this deep water in the pool?"
Caesar asked his fiancee.

"No, it doesn't me."

"It does me."

"Because you are a poet," she said, "and I am not; I am very prosaic."

"Really?"

"Yes."

The more Caesar talked with Amparito, the less he understood her and the
more he needed to be with her.

"We really do not think the same about anything," Caesar used to tell
himself, "and yet we understand each other."

Many times he endeavoured to make a psychological resume of Amparito's
character, but he didn't succeed. He didn't know how to classify her;
her type always escaped him.

"All her notions are different from mine," he used to think; "she speaks
in another way, feels in another way, she even has a different moral
code. How strange!"

Also, what Amparito knew was completely heterogeneous; she spoke French
well and wrote it fairly correctly; in Spanish, on the other hand, she
had no idea of spelling. Caesar was always stupefied on seeing the
transpositions of h's, s's, and z's that she made in her letters.

There remained by Amparito, from her passage through the French school,
a recollection of the history of France made up of a few anecdotes and a
few phrases. Thus, it was not unusual to hear her speak of Turenne,
of Francis I, or of Colbert. For the rest, she played the piano badly
enough and with extremely little enthusiasm.

This was the part belonging to her education as a rich young lady; that
which belonged to the country girl, who lived among peasants, was more
curious and personal.

She knew many plants by their vulgar names, and understood their
industrial and medicinal use. Besides, she spoke in such pure, natural
phrases that Caesar was filled with admiration.

Caesar had reached such a degree of exaltation that he thought of
nothing any more, except his sweetheart. At night, before going to
sleep, he thought of her deliriously. He often dreamed that Amparito had
changed into the red-flowered oleander of the wild palace garden, and
in every flower of the oleander he