The image of the Empress obsessed his childish thoughts.  At night when he felt afraid in bed, impressed by the enormousness of the room that served as his sleeping chamber, it was enough for him to recall the sovereign of Byzantium to make him forget immediately his disquietude and the thousand queer noises in the old building.  “Dona Constanza!"...  And he would go off to sleep cuddling the pillow, as though it were the head of the basilisa, his closed eyes continuing to see the black eyes of the regal Senora, maternal and affectionate.

All womankind, on coming near him, took on something of that other one who had been sleeping for the past six centuries in the upper part of the chapel wall.  When his mother, sweet and pallid Dona Cristina, would stop her fancy work for an instant to give him a kiss, he always saw in her smile something of the Empress.  When Visenteta, a maid from the country—­a brunette, with eyes like blackberries, rosy-cheeked and soft-skinned—­would help him to undress, or awaken him to take him to school, Ulysses would always throw his arms around her as though enchanted by the perfume of her vigorous and chaste vitality.  “Visenteta!...  Oh, Visenteta!...”  And he was thinking of Dona Constanza; Empresses must be just that fragrant....  Just like that must be the texture of their skin!...  And mysterious and incomprehensible thrills would pass over his body like light exhalations, bubbling up from the slime that is sleeping in the depths of all infancy and coming to the surface during adolescence.

His father guessed in part this imaginary life upon seeing his pet plays and readings.

“Ah, comedian!...  Ah, play-actor!...  You are like your godfather.”

He used to say this with an ambiguous smile in which were equally mingled his contempt for useless idealism and his respect for the artist—­a respect similar to the veneration that the Arabs feel for the demented, believing their insanity to be a gift from God.

Dona Cristina was very anxious that this only son, as spoiled and coddled as though he were a Crown Prince, should become a priest.  To see him intone his first Mass!...  Then a canon; then a prelate!  Who knew if perhaps when she was no longer living, other women might not admire him when preceded by a cross of gold, trailing the red state robe of a cardinal-archbishop, and surrounded by a robed staff—­envying the mother who had given birth to this ecclesiastical magnate!...

In order to guide the inclinations of her son she had installed a chapel in one of the empty rooms of the great old house.  Ulysses’ school companions on free afternoons would hasten thither, doubly attracted by the enchantment, of “playing priest” and by the generous refreshment that Dona Cristina used to prepare for all the parish clergy.

This solemnity would begin with the furious pealing of some bells hanging over the parlor door, causing the notary’s clients, seated in the vestibule waiting for the papers that the clerks were just scribbling off at full speed, to raise their heads in astonishment.  The metallic uproar rocked the edifice whose corners had seemed so full of silence, and even disturbed the calm of the street through which a carriage only occasionally passed.