“Poor unhappy Carmelo!...  He no longer writes, he no longer reads....  Ay! what will ever become of me?...”

She always spoke of the poet’s failing powers with the commiseration of a strong and healthy person, and she became terrified when thinking of the years in which she might survive her lord.  Taken up with caring for him, she never even glanced at herself.

A year afterward, on returning from the Philippines, the captain found a letter from his god-father awaiting him at Port Said.  Dona Pepa had died, and Labarta, working off the tearful heaviness of his low spirits, bade her farewell in a long canticle.  Ulysses ran his eyes over the enclosed newspaper clipping containing the last verses of the poet.  The stanzas were in Castilian.  A bad sign!...  After that there could be no doubt that his end must be very near.

Ferragut never again had an opportunity to see his god-father, who died while he was on one of his trips.  Upon disembarking at Barcelona, Dona Cristina handed him a letter written by the poet almost in his death-agony.  “Valencia, my son!  Always Valencia!” And after repeating this recommendation many times, he announced that he had made his god-son his heir.

The books, the statues, all the glorious souvenirs of the poet-laureate, came to Barcelona to adorn the sailor’s home.  The little Telemachus amused himself pulling apart the old wreaths of the troubador, and tearing out the old prints from his volumes with the inconsequence of a lively child whose father is very far away and who knows that he is idolized by two indulgent ladies.  Besides his trophies, the poet left Ulysses an old house in Valencia, some real estate and a certain amount in negotiable securities,—­total, thirty thousand dollars.

The other guardian of his infancy, the vigorous Triton, seemed to be unaffected by the passing of the years.  Upon his return to Barcelona, Ferragut frequently found him installed in his home, in mute hostility to Dona Cristina, devoting to Cinta and her son a part of the affection that he had formerly lavished upon Ulysses alone.

He was very desirous that the little Esteban should know the home of his great grandparents.

“You will let me have him?...  You know well enough,” he coaxed, “that down in the Marina men become as strong as though made of bronze.  Surely you will let me have him?...”

But he quailed before the indignant gesture of the suave Dona Cristina.  Entrust her grandson to the Triton, and let him awaken in him the love of maritime adventure, as he had done with Ulysses?...  Behind me, thou blue devil!

The doctor used to wander around bewildered by the port of Barcelona....  Too much noisy bustle, too much movement!  Walking proudly along by the side of Ulysses, he loved to recount to him the adventures of his life as a sailor and cosmopolitan vagabond.  He considered his nephew the greatest of the Ferraguts, a true man of the sea like his ancestors but with the title of captain;—­an adventurous rover over all oceans, as he had been, but with a place on the bridge, invested with the absolute command that responsibility and danger confer.  When Ulysses reembarked, the Triton would take himself off to his own dominions.