His father’s lamentations opened up new horizons to the little fellow’s suspicions.  Suddenly he grasped the prime motive force of our existence, hitherto only conjectured and enveloped in mystery.  His godfather had relations with a woman; he was enamored like the heroes of the novels!  And the boy recalled many of his Valencian poems, all rhapsodizing a lady—­sometimes singing of her great beauty with the rapture and noble lassitude of a recent possession; at others complaining of her coldness, begging of her that disposition of her soul without which the gift of the body is as naught.

Ulysses imagined to himself a grand senora as beautiful as Dona Constanza.  At the very least, she must be a Marchioness.  His godfather certainly deserved that much!  And he also imagined to himself that their rendezvous must be in the morning, in one of the strawberry gardens near the city, where his parents were accustomed to take him for his breakfast chocolate after hearing the first dawn service on the Sundays of April and May.

Much later, when seated at his godfather’s table, he surprised the poet exchanging glances over his head with the housekeeper, and began to suspect that possibly Dona Pepa might be the inspiration of so much lachrymose and enthusiastic verse.  But his great loyalty rebelled before such a supposition.  No, no, it could not be possible; assuredly there must be another!

The notary, who for long years had been friendly with Labarta, kept trying to direct him with his practical spirit, like the boy who guides a blind man.  A modest income inherited from his parents was enough for the poet to live upon.  In vain his friend brought him cases that represented enormous fees.  The voluminous documents would become covered with dust on his table and Don Esteban would have to saddle himself with the dates in order that the end of the legal procedures should not slip by.

His son, Ulysses would be a very different sort of man, thought the notary.  In his mind’s eye he could see the lad as a great civilian jurist like his godfather, but with a positive activity inherited from his father.  Fortune would enter through his doors on waves of stamped paper.

Furthermore, he would also possess the notarial studio—­the dusty office with its ancient furniture and great wardrobes, with its screen doors and green curtains, behind which reposed the volumes of the protocol, covered with yellowing calfskin with initials and numbers on their backs.  Don Esteban realized fully all that his study represented.

“There is no orange grove,” he would say in his expansive moments; “there are no rice plantations that can produce what this estate does.  Here there are no frosts, nor strong sea winds, nor inundations.”