The Project Gutenberg EBook of Luna Benamor, by Vicente Blasco Ibanez

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Title: Luna Benamor

Author: Vicente Blasco Ibanez

Translator: Isaac Goldberg

Release Date: June 19, 2007 [EBook #21870]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LUNA BENAMOR ***

Produced by Chuck Greif

LUNA BENAMOR

BY

VICENTE BLASCO IBANEZ

TRANSLATED FROM THE ORIGINAL SPANISH BY

ISAAC GOLDBERG

JOHN W. LUCE & COMPANY

BOSTON 1919

CONTENTS

LUNA BENAMOR, A Novel

THE TOAD

COMPASSION

LUXURY

RABIES

THE WINDFALL

THE LAST LION

LUNA BENAMOR

I

LUIS AGUIRRE had been living in Gibraltar for about a month. He had
arrived with the intention of sailing at once upon a vessel bound for
Oceanica, where he was to assume his post as a consul to Australia. It
was the first important voyage of his diplomatic career. Up to that time
he had served in Madrid, in the offices of the Ministry, or in various
consulates of southern France, elegant summery places where for half the
year life was a continuous holiday. The son of a family that had been
dedicated to diplomacy by tradition, he enjoyed the protection of
influential persons. His parents were dead, but he was helped by his
relatives and the prestige of a name that for a century had figured in
the archives of the nation. Consul at the age of twenty-five, he was
about to set sail with the illusions of a student who goes out into the
world for the first time, feeling that all previous trips have been
insignificant.

Gibraltar, incongruous and exotic, a mixture of races and languages, was
to him the first sign of the far-off world in quest of which he was
journeying. He doubted, in his first surprise, if this rocky land
jutting into the open sea and under a foreign flag, could be a part of
his native peninsula. When he gazed out from the sides of the cliff
across the vast blue bay with its rose-colored mountains dotted by the
bright settlements of La Linea, San Roque and Algeciras,--the cheery
whiteness of Andalusian towns,--he felt convinced that he was still in
Spain. But great difference distinguished the human groups c