s father.

Rafael was a quiet, morose little boy, whose gentleness of disposition
seemed to irritate the hard-hearted dona Bernarda. He was always hanging
on to her skirts. Every time she raised her eyes she would find the
little fellow's gaze fixed upon her.

"Go out and play in _the patio_," the mother would say.

And the little fellow, moody and resigned, would leave the room, as if
in obedience to a disagreeable command.

Don Andres alone was successful in amusing the child, with his tales and
his strolls through the orchards, picking flowers for him, making
whistles for him out of reeds. It was don Andres who took him to school,
also, and who advertised the boy's fondness for study everywhere.

If don Rafael were a serious, melancholy lad, that defect was chargeable
to his interest in books, and at the Casino, the "Party's" Club, he
would say to his fellow-worshippers:

"You'll see something doing when Rafaelito grows up. That kid is going
to be another Canovas."

And before all those rustic minds the vision of a Brull at the head of
the Government would suddenly flash, filling the first page of the
newspapers with speeches six columns long, and a _To Be Continued_ at
the end; and they could see themselves rolling in money and running all
Spain, just as they now ran their District, to their own sweet wills.

Never did a Prince of Wales grow up amid the respect and the adulation
heaped upon little Brull. At school, the children regarded him as a
superior being who had condescended to come down among them for his
education. A well-scribbled sheet, a lesson fluently repeated, were
enough for the teacher, who belonged to "the Party" (just to collect his
wages on time and without trouble,) to declare in prophetic tones:

"Go on working like that, senor de Brull. You are destined to great
things."

At the _tertulias_ his mother attended evenings in his company, it was
enough for him to recite a fable or get off some piece of learning
characteristic of a studious child eager to bring his school work into
the conversation, for the women to rush upon him and smother him with
kisses.

"But how much that child knows!... How brilliant he is!"

And some old woman would add, sententiously:

"Bernarda, take good care of the child; don't let him use his brain so
much. It's bad for him. See how peaked he looks!..."

He finished his preparatory education with the Dominicans, taking the
leading role in all the plays