At other times, Ulysses repeated the same game under the name of “Indians and Conquerors.”  He had found in the mountains of books stored away by his father, a volume that related in double columns, with abundant wood cuts, the navigations of Columbus, the wars of Hernando Cortez, and the exploits of Pizarro.

This book cast a glamor over the rest of his existence.  Many times afterwards, when a man, he found this image latent in the background of his likes and desires.  He really had read few of its paragraphs, but what interested him most were the engravings—­in his estimation more worthy of admiration than all the pictures in the garret.

With the point of his long sword he would trace on the ground, just as Pizarro had done before his discouraged companions, ready on the Island of Gallo to desist from the conquest:  “Let every good Castilian pass this line....”  And the good Castilians—­a dozen little scamps with long capes and ancient swords whose hilts reached up to their mouths—­would hasten to group themselves around their chief, who was imitating the heroic gestures of the conqueror.  Then was heard the war-cry:  “At them!  Down with the Indians!”

It was agreed that the Indians should flee and on that account they were modestly clad in scraps of tapestry and cock feathers on their head.  But they fled treacherously, and upon finding themselves upon varguenos, tables and pyramids of chairs, they began to shy books at their persecutors.  Venerable leather volumes decorated with dull gold, and folios of white parchment fell face downward on the floor, their fastenings breaking apart and spreading abroad a rain of printed or manuscript pages and yellowing engravings—­as though tired of living, they were letting their life-blood flow from their bodies.

The uproar of these wars of conquest brought Dona Cristina to the rescue.  She no longer cared to harbor little imps who preferred the adventurous whoops of the garret to the mystic delights of the abandoned chapel.  The Indians were most worthy of execration.  In order to make splendor of attire counterbalance the humility of their role, they had slashed their sinful scissors into entire tapestries, mutilating vestments so as to arrange upon their breasts the head of a hero or goddess.

Finding himself without playfellows, Ulysses discovered a new enchantment in the garret life.  The silence haunted by the creaking of wood and the scampering of invisible animals, the inexplicable fall of a picture or of some piled-up books, used to make him thrill with a sensation of fear and nocturnal mystery, despite the rays of sunlight that came filtering in through the skylights; but he began to enjoy this solitude when he found that he could people it to his fancy.  Real beings soon annoyed him like the inopportune sounds that sometimes awoke him from beautiful dreams.  The garret was a world several centuries old that now belonged entirely to him and adjusted itself to all his fancies.