Home to Alcira came rumors of other exploits by the “Prince,” as don Jaime called his boy in view of the latter’s ability to run through money.  In parties with friends of the family, don Ramon’s doings were spoken of as scandalous actually—­a duel after a quarrel at cards; then a father and a brother—­common workingmen in flannel shirts!—­who had sworn they would kill him if he didn’t marry a certain girl he had been taking to her shop by day and to dance-halls by night.

Old Brull made up his mind to tolerate these escapades of his son no longer; and he made him give up his studies.  Ramon would not be a lawyer; well, after all, one didn’t have to have a degree to be a man of importance.  Besides the father felt he was getting old; it was hard for him to look after the working of his orchards personally.  He could make good use of that son who seemed to have been born to impose his will upon everybody around him.

For some time past don Jaime had had his eye on the daughter of a friend of his.  The Brull house showed noticeable lack of a woman’s presence.  His wife had died shortly after his retirement from business, and the old codger stamped in rage at the slovenliness and laziness displayed by his servants.  He would marry Ramon to Bernarda—­an ugly, ill-humored, yellowish, skinny creature—­but sole heiress to her father’s three beautiful orchards.  Besides, she was conspicuous for her industrious, economical ways, and a parsimony in her expenditures that came pretty close to stinginess.

Ramon did as his father bade him.  Brought up with all the ideas of a rural skinflint, he thought no decent person could object to marrying an ugly bad-tempered woman, so long as she had plenty of money.

The father-in-law and the daughter-in-law understood each other perfectly.  The old man’s eyes would water at sight of that stern, long-faced puritan, who never had much to say in the house, but went into high dudgeon over the slightest waste on the part of the domestics, scolding the farmhands for the merest oversight in the orchards, haggling and wrangling with the orange drummers for a centime more or less per hundredweight.  That new daughter of his was to be the solace of his old age!

Meantime, the “prince” would be off hunting every morning in the nearby mountains and lounging every afternoon in the cafe; but he was no longer content with the admiration of the idlers hanging around a billiard table, nor was he taking part in the game upstairs.  He was frequenting the circles of “serious” people now, had made friends with the alcalde and was talking all the time of the great need for getting all “decent” folk together to take the “rabble” in hand!

“Ambition is pecking at him,” the old man gleefully remarked to his daughter-in-law.  “Let him alone, woman; he’ll get there, he’ll get there...  That’s the way I like to see him.”

Ramon began by winning a seat in the Ayuntamiento, and soon was an outstanding figure there.  The least objection to his views he regarded as a personal insult; he would transfer debates in session out into the streets and settle them there with threats and fisticuffs.  His greatest glory was to have his enemies say of him: