of his life, and he must resort
to it like the great criminals of other centuries who had taken refuge
in the isolation of monasteries.

He needed to vent his wrath on somebody, to find some responsible
person whom he might blame for his misfortunes. Cinta had revealed
herself to him as an entirely new being. He would never have suspected
such energy of character, such passionate vehemence, in his sweet,
obedient, little wife. She must have some counselor who was encouraging
her complaints and making her speak badly of her husband.

And he fixed upon Don Pedro, the professor, because there was still
deep within him a certain dislike of the man since the days of his
courtship. Besides, it offended him to see him in his home with a
certain air of a noble personage whose virtue served as foil for the
sins and shortcomings of the master of the house.

The professor evidently considered Ferragut on a level with all the
famous Don Juans,--liberal and care-free when in far-away homes,
punctilious and suspiciously correct in his own.

"That old blatherskite!" said Ulysses to himself, "is in love with
Cinta. It is a platonic passion: with him, it couldn't be anything
else. But it annoys me greatly.... I'm going to say a few things to
him."

Don Pedro, who was continuing his daily visits in order to console the
mother, speaking of poor Esteban as though he were his own son, and
casting servile smiles upon the captain, found himself intercepted by
him one afternoon, on the landing of the stairway.

The sailor aged suddenly while talking, and his features were accented
with a vigorous ugliness. At that moment he looked exactly like his
uncle, the _Triton_.

With a threatening voice, he recalled a classic passage well known to
the professor. His namesake, old Ulysses, upon returning to his palace,
had found Penelope surrounded with suitors and had ended by hanging
them on tenterhooks.

"Wasn't that the way of it, Professor?... I do not find here more than
one suitor, but this Ulysses swears to you that he will hang him in the
same way if he finds him again in his home."

Don Pedro fled. He had always found the rude heroes of the Odyssey very
interesting, but in verse and on paper. In reality they now seemed to
him most dangerous brutes, and he wrote a letter to Cinta telling her
that he would suspend his visits until her husband should have returned
to sea.

This insult increased the wife's distant bearing. She resente