“She!...  She spoke to you about me?”

“Oh, nothing important!  She told me she saw you one afternoon up at the Hermitage.”

Cupido kept the rest to himself.  He did not say that Leonora, on mentioning Rafael’s name, had added that he looked like an “idiot.”

Rafael’s heart leaped with joy!  She had talked of him!  She had not forgotten that meeting which had left such a painful memory in him!...  What was he doing, then, standing like a fool there on that bridge, when down at the Blue House they might be needing a man’s help?

“Listen, Cupido; I have my boat right handy here; you know, the boat father had made to order in Valencia as a present for me.  Steel frame; hard wood; safe as a warship.  You know the river ...  I’ve seen you handle an oar more than once; and I’ve got a pair of arms myself ...  What do you say?”

“I say, let’s go,” the barber answered resolutely.

They asked for a torch, and with the help of several men dragged Rafael’s boat toward a stairway on the riverbank.

Above, through the crowds on the bridge, the news of the expedition flashed, but exaggerated and much idealized by the curious.  The men were going to save a poor family that had taken refuge on the roof of a house—­poor devils in danger of being swept off at any moment.  Rafael had learned of their plight, and he was starting to save them at the risk of his own skin.  And a wealthy, powerful man like him, with so much to live for!  Damn it, those Brulls were all men, anyhow!...  And yet see how people talked against them!  What a heart!  And the peasants followed the blood-red glow of the torch in the boat as it mirrored across the waters, gazing adoringly at Rafael, who was sitting in the stern.  Out of the dark entreating voices called.  Many loyal followers of the Brulls were eager to go with the chief—­drown with him, if need be.

Cupido protested.  No; for a job like that, the fewer the better; the boat had to be light; he would do for the oars and Rafael could steer.

“Let her go!  Let her go!” called Rafael.

And the boat, after hesitating a second, shot off on the current.

In the narrow gorge between the Old City and the New, the swollen torrent swept them along like lightning.  The barber used his oars just to keep the boat away from the shore.  Submerged rocks sent great whirlpools to the surface and pulled the boat this way and that.  The light of the torch cast a dull reddish glow out over the muddy eddies.  Tree trunks, refuse, dead animals, went floating by, shapeless masses with only a few dark points visible above the surface, as though some dead man covered with mud were swimming under water.  Out on that swirling current, with the slimy vapors of the river rising to his nostrils and the eddies sucking and boiling all around, Rafael thought himself the victim of a weird nightmare and began even to repent of his rashness.  Cries kept coming