Project Gutenberg's First Love (Little Blue Book #1195), by Various

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Title: First Love (Little Blue Book #1195)
And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life

Author: Various

Release Date: April 12, 2005 [EBook #15610]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIRST LOVE (LITTLE BLUE BOOK ***

Produced by Ted Garvin and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

First Love
And Other Fascinating Stories
of Spanish Life

Emilia Pardo-Bazan
and Others

LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 1195
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius

HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
GIRARD, KANSAS

CONTENTS

First Love
_Emilia Pardo-Bazan._

An Andalusian Duel
_Serafin Estebanez Calderon._

Mariquita the Bald
_Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch._

The Love of Clotilde
_Armando Palacio Valdes._

Captain Veneno's Proposal of Marriage
_Pedro Antonio de Alarcon._

FIRST LOVE

Emilia Pardo-Bazan

How old was I then? Eleven or twelve years? More probably thirteen,
for before then is too early to be seriously in love; but I won't
venture to be certain, considering that in Southern countries the
heart matures early, if that organ is to blame for such perturbations.

If I do not remember well _when_, I can at least say exactly _how_ my
first love revealed itself. I was very fond--as soon as my aunt had
gone to church to perform her evening devotions--of slipping into her
bedroom and rummaging her chest of drawers, which she kept in
admirable order. Those drawers were to me a museum; in them I always
came across something rare or antique, which exhaled an archaic and
mysterious scent, the aroma of the sandalwood fans which perfumed her
white linen. Pin-cushions of satin now faded; knitted mittens,
carefully wrapped in tissue paper; prints of saints; sewing materials;
a reticule of blue velvet embroidered with bugles, an amber and silver
rosary would appear from the corners: I used to ponder over them, and
return them to their place. But one day--I remember as well as if it
were today--in the corner of the top drawer, and lying on some collars
of old lace, I saw somethin