On the following trip, Dona Cristina obliged her to remain at home, fearing that the excitement and the crowds at the harbor might affect her approaching maternity.  After that on each of his return trips Ferragut saw a new son, although always the same one; first it was a bundle of batiste and lace carried by a showily-uniformed nurse; then by the time he was captain of the transatlantic liner, a little cherub in short skirts, chubby-cheeked, with a round head covered with a silky down, holding out its little arms to him; finally a boy who was beginning to go to school and at sight of his father would grasp his hard right hand, admiring him with his great eyes, as though he saw in his person the concentrated perfection of all the forces of the universe.

Don Pedro, the professor, continued visiting the house of Dona Cristina, although with less assiduity.  He had the resigned and coldly wrathful attitude of the man who believes that he has arrived too late and is convinced that his bad luck was merely the result of his carelessness....  If he had only spoken before!  His masculine self-importance never permitted him to doubt that the young girl would have accepted him jubilantly.

In spite of this conviction, he was not able to refrain at times from a certain ironical aggressiveness which expressed itself by inventing classic nicknames.  The young wife of Ulysses, bending over her lace-making, was Penelope awaiting the return of her wandering husband.

Dona Cristina accepted this nickname because she knew vaguely that Penelope was a queen of good habits.  But the day that the professor, by logical deduction, called Cinta’s son Telemachus, the grandmother protested.

“He is named Esteban after his grandfather....  Telemachus is nothing but a theatrical name.”

On one of his voyages Ulysses took advantage of a four-hour stop in the port of Valencia to see his godfather.  From time to time he had been receiving letters from the poet,—­each one shorter and sadder,—­written in a trembling script that announced his age and increasing infirmity.

Upon entering the office Ferragut felt just like the legendary sleepers who believe themselves awaking after a few hours of sleep when they have really been dozing for dozens of years.  Everything there was still just as it was in his infancy:—­the busts of the great poets on the top of the book-cases, the wreaths in their glass cases, the jewels and statuettes, prizes for successful poems—­were still in their crystal cabinets or resting on the same pedestals; the books in their resplendent bindings formed their customary close battalions the length of the bookcases.  But the whiteness of the busts had taken on the color of chocolate, the bronzes were reddened by oxidation, the gold had turned greenish, and the wreaths were losing their leaves.  It seemed as though ashes might have rained down upon perpetuity.